On the Brink of Nothing
by EvenAtMyDarkest
Summary: He's had so much taken from him before. His body, his voice, his youth. Now he faces yet another different kind of thief, one that drains his ability to sense the world around him. Good thing Donna's with him this time. Set between Midnight and Turn Left.
1. Chapter 1

_I don't own Doctor Who, I don't own the Doctor or the lovely Donna, I don't own the TARDIS or the sonic screwdriver, nor do I own any of the other elements and aspects introduced in the BBC show Doctor Who. I do, however, own Cirula, and wotgei, and various other elements of Cirulian culture that will come up in later chapters—such as the monster of the week, which will remain unseen for a while, but rest assured, it's there, and I own it. I also own my words. But yeah, everything else is Moffat's. And I am making no profit from this, so he doesn't need to feel threatened or anything. Enjoy!_

The planet Cirula was beautiful. It was a third the size of Earth, and only one-fourth of it was water, with the rest mostly dominated by hilly land. It was very mountainous, and it also had its share of lakes and rivers and forests, but the Doctor had brought Donna to see the hills.

The grass was a pale violet colour, and it was long, so when there was a breeze, you could see the ripples distinctly as they spread across the grass. And it was breezy often on Cirula. Donna immediately loved it when they stepped out of the TARDIS onto one of the tallest hills on the planet.

They picnicked there, and the Doctor treated her to an ancient traditional Cirulian dish, something called a "wotgei." It was some greenish fruit smashed into a pulp and served in a bowl with a few spices that Donna couldn't identify. But it was _good_.

She didn't ask until she was almost finished, so involved was she in the dish—"So if this is a traditional dish, not just some fruit that grows here, there must have been people here at some point, yeah? So where are they?"

The Doctor shrugged. "They must be around here somewhere. We just haven't seen any."

Donna started swiping her finger around the bottom of the bowl for the last traces of wotgei. "Shame. This is an amazing dish. Didn't know you could cook."

He gave a crooked grin. "I can't. I bought these off a stall at the last intergalactic market we stopped at. Remember?"

She fingered the pretty bracelet that changed colour every twelve hours that she'd gotten there. "Oh. Can't say I'm surprised."

He set aside his bowl and stood up. "We can try to find them, if you want. I'm actually not terribly familiar with Cirula."

She raised her eyebrows. "You're not?"

The Doctor shrugged. "No one really is. It's a bit like Earth. Sort of isolated. They know that alien life exists but few Cirulians actually engage in interplanetary travel."

"But you're _very_ familiar with Earth," she teased. "Just not this place."

"Right," he said with a small grin. "Shall we go?"

Donna climbed to her feet. "But of course."

* * *

They'd walked for at least an hour, maybe two. Donna had lost track. These hills gave her an overwhelming sense of peace, strange though they were. Neither of them had said much. The Doctor had seemed lost in thought, as he usually did if you left him to his own devices for long enough.

Eventually, though, they came to a small drop off, which of course hid a wall of rock that the Doctor was now examining with interest. Donna didn't know what he found so interesting about it. Eventually he took out his sonic screwdriver and began to scan the rocks. She'd waited for several minutes with rapidly thinning patience when finally she blurted, "What on Earth are you looking at?"

The Doctor looked up at her, eyebrows raised, and she caught herself, realizing the expression she'd used. "I've _got_ to get out of the habit of saying that…"

He chuckled, and slid his screwdriver back into his pocket. "Something in here is giving off an energy signature. A lot of somethings, actually, but as to what they are, I haven't the foggiest."

Donna pursed her lips. "That sounds like the rock is hollow and there's a cave behind it."

He looked excited but crestfallen at the same time. Donna had no idea how he was pulling that off. "Exploring doesn't sound like a very wise idea, does it?"

She smiled at him. Sometimes he seemed almost childlike to her. "How would we even get through? This rock—" She leaned forward and rapped her knuckles against it twice "—you'd need a stick of dynamite."

The Time Lord nodded in acceptance and looked as if he were about to say something in reply, but, lo and behold, there was a low rumbling sound, and Donna felt the stone beneath her feet quaking slightly. Shaken with a sudden terror, she leaped off the rock and onto the lovely soft grass, grabbing the Doctor's arm to steady herself as a section of the stone wall crumbled in on itself, leaving an opening about a meter across, and twice as tall as it was wide. Donna stared at it breathlessly for several seconds before realizing that she was still holding the Doctor's arm. She released it and stepped away from him, but he wasn't even looking at her. He was staring openly at the hole with his eyebrows knit together and maybe Donna was imagining it, but she thought she saw a touch of trepidation in his eyes…

"Either that wall is the most unstable one I've ever seen or heard of," he said, finally turning his head to meet her eyes, "or something wants us in there."

Donna was immediately ready to back away, but just as immediately, the ground underneath her was just as stable as the wall and she slid and tumbled and fell forward through the rocks and the sand and the darkness.

 _A/N: Short and relatively uneventful first chapter, but things are about to pick up. Stay tuned!_


	2. Chapter 2

_Here comes chapter two! Three will be up soon. I still don't own Doctor Who. Weird, right?_

* * *

She woke up with the gut feeling that she'd been unconscious for only a few minutes. She also woke up with a soreness spread across her skin but fortunately no real pain beyond that.

After taking a few moments to gather herself, she lifted her head slowly and saw the only light there was in the darkness—the sonic screwdriver. The Doctor was crouching over her and appeared to be using it solely as a light source. He was handling it clumsily, which immediately worried Donna.

"You okay?" she asked.

He looked up. His face was illuminated only very dimly by the screwdriver's light, and she could just make out his features. "Are you?"

"I think so, just bruised." His shoulders sagged as he allowed himself to relax a little, and he nodded. She waited, watching him as he seemed to do a final once-over of her and decide that she was probably right. He started to put his screwdriver away and then seemed to remember that he needed it for light. She watched him and finally repeated more forcefully, "Doctor. Are you all right?"

He put his hand to his forehead, but she really couldn't make out any details in his face. His hand quickly flew to his throat, his chest, his sides, and his legs, and after a few seconds of this he said, "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Really?" Donna said dubiously.

"Cross my hearts," he promised.

She laughed a little, but it turned into a cough. She waved her hand in front of her face. "Dust's still settling."

"Yes, you've only been out for about seven minutes."

Donna opened her mouth to ask how he could possibly know that, then snapped it shut. "What about you?"

"Oh, only a couple of minutes less."

She nodded, and looked around, though it didn't work very well since the little screwdriver didn't come close to illuminating the entire cave. "So what now?"

The Doctor reached the screwdriver out, apparently scanning their surroundings. "It goes on and on and on. Opening this way." He sprang to his feet very suddenly, and pointed his screwdriver off into the darkness.

Donna stood up, slightly shaky but none the worse for wear. She grasped his arm. "Doctor, I can't see a thing."

"That's all right, neither can I. Just keep ahold of me and I'll scan the ground, make sure we don't trip or fall down any deep chasms to our deaths."

She scowled at him, though of course he couldn't see it.

* * *

Progress was slow. The Doctor had to be very careful, make sure he had scanned the area very well and account for all contingencies before they could take each step. He knew Donna was getting slightly annoyed by his thoroughness, but she didn't say anything because it was what was keeping them alive.

Honestly, he was multitasking. He really didn't know much about Cirula, but obviously there was something on this planet that had trapped them in a cave. He knew they could well be lost in here for a very long time—it was a cave, for goodness sake—but something told him there was something else worthier of concern at the moment. He just couldn't think what it might be. So instead, he settled on being content that his instincts were assuring him that getting out wouldn't be a problem.

When they finally sat down for a rest, she brought up the possibility: "These caves could go on for ages. You've got to have a better plan than this. How are we getting out?"

She was whispering. The echoing of the caves unnerved her, and quite honestly he didn't like it much either. "There are people not too far away," he replied, just as quietly.

"How do you know?" He could just _hear_ her brow furrowing in the question, though he couldn't see anything at all. He'd temporarily shut off his screwdriver.

"Time Lords, we… we've got six senses. All of yours, and then a certain… telepathic sense. We had a word for it in Gallifreyan but there's no English equivalent. It's how I can see into another's mind."

"You can do that?" He heard the shock quite plainly.

"Yes. You've never seen that?" He chose not to address her look of shock. "Anyway, I can sense them. I can't hear what they're thinking or anything, and I can't contact them over this distance, but I can sense the presence of minds and thoughts not too far from here. I am sure that we'll be able to find them."

Donna was in a much better mood after that. She seemed to have a bit more energy and she complained less, though she'd already been quite a trooper before.

The Doctor, however, was feeling as if he were missing something. The musty smell of the cave, the planet they were on, the way the cave-in had seemed to happen right on cue—it all came together in a way that made the Doctor sure that there was something he should be worried about, but couldn't remember with any clarity. Like a dream.

He shrugged it off with relative ease. It was probably nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

_The chapters are going to start getting longer after this._

 _Still don't own Doctor Who._

* * *

Hours had passed, and Donna was getting hungry.

The wotgei had been delicious but not particularly filling. In truth, it had been a semi-solid. Like Jell-O's much prettier and more successful cousin. And it was hours behind them.

The Doctor, of course, was suffering no such hunger; he was successfully suppressing it. But he couldn't deny the fact that a good-sized meal would be lovely around now. The problem was that they had no food.

Donna had also complained briefly an hour or so ago about her hair getting frizzy in the dampness of the cave, and he would be lying if he claimed not to be grateful that Donna was the only one here to witness the gradual flattening of his glorious mane (and even she wasn't focusing on any more than was necessary for safety by the dim light of the sonic screwdriver).

"How far away are these people you sense?" Donna panted as they plopped down for a rest after successfully navigating around a who-knew-how-deep drop. The hole had been cavernous, and totally black. She shifted several more inches away from it and tried to block it from her memory.

The Doctor rubbed the back of his head, taking a moment to formulate a reply. "Hard to say."

Her stomach growled again, loudly. "'Hard to say'? You told me they were close!"

"'Close enough to get to before we die of thirst' is what I meant."

"Oh, well that's _lovely_ ," Donna huffed in an impressive mix of sarcasm and nervousness.

The Doctor smiled at her without thinking, but his expression quickly turned to a reassuring determination—all happening before he remembered they were in pitch black. He activated his screwdriver to offer a bit of reassuring light, and tried again. "I mean that. It'll be hard, and when we're done you'll need a nice long rest, but we'll get there."

After about ten more minutes of walking, he suddenly noticed that the musty scent of the cave had all but faded away. He twitched his nose. _Well, at least that's a bit better._

* * *

It had been at least six hours, he decided. Six hours of near-constant movement without food or water. They rested when they needed to, but they needed to keep moving a whole lot more.

Six hours… and they were so close to their destination. Just half an hour ago he had whispered to Donna, "We're so close. I can feel it."

He had been giving the sonic screwdriver a rest since then, and as a result they were moving even more excruciatingly slowly and carefully than before. It was pitch black. It had unnerved Donna unbelievably for the first several minutes, but then she'd gradually begun to grow accustomed to it.

Six hours it had been, when Donna suddenly shifted his arm into her other hand so she could reach the other one around to his opposite shoulder and give him a side squeeze, and said, "Oh my God, it's light."

He blinked, shocked. "What?"

"Light, I can see, just dimly, but—it's gotta be cracks, or an opening or something, but—there's light!"

He continued to blink, and stare around, willing this light of which she spoke to appear to him.

"Doctor?" She still sounded excited.

He tried. But—

No. Just darkness.

"I can't see anything," he said, softly, shocked.

"Well, maybe I've just got better eyes than you," she said, unconcerned and teasingly smug.

"No you haven't, you're a human." He was looking every which way, trying to see what she was talking about. "So why can't I see anything?"

Though he couldn't see her face, it was clear that Donna was puzzled. "I've no idea."

His movements more panicked and jerky than he wanted them to be, he reached into his breast pocket and withdrew the sonic screwdriver. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, preparing himself, then opened them as he pushed the button to activate its whirring and faint blue light.

He saw nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

_I have not come into ownership of Doctor Who since the last update._

 _If anyone's reading, please leave a review and let me know what you think._

* * *

Donna had wanted to comfort the Doctor, who clearly was in some kind of state of shock and panic, but he was adamant that she find his screwdriver, which he had dropped somewhere at his feet. Though she could see her surroundings now, it was still terribly dim, and she was searching on her hands and knees. It had been only a minute or two, but she was getting worried—more about the screwdriver than the Doctor at first.

But when she found it after several minutes of groping around, and returned to his side, it was clear that there was something terribly wrong. He was breathing deeply, trying to conceal his panic, and doing a rather shoddy job of it.

"Oi," she said, grasping his arm once again, but this time to offer him some sort of comfort rather than use him for stability, "what's wrong?"

"Donna," he said, and hesitated, as if he hated what he was about to say. "You need to get me out of here."

She gaped at him. Out of all things… she never would have expected him to say that.

He seemed to sense her astonishment. "Please, Donna."

"I don't understand. Tell me what's going on."

"There is something… parasitic… living in these caves. So little is known about them that they don't have names. But one of them's made me its host and now I've lost my sense of sight. I'm blind."

Donna stared. He was facing her, but she couldn't see well enough to tell whether his eyes were trained on her. "Blind?" she breathed.

He surged to his feet so suddenly that she let out a little "meep" of surprise. "Let's talk while we walk. Lead me, because I can't see anything. You have the screwdriver?"

Clutching it to her chest, still at a loss for words, she nodded.

"Donna!"

"Yes," she said, mentally kicking herself.

"Then use it for light. Come on, we need to get out!"

He sounded urgent, and she instinctively obeyed, letting him grasp her arm, even though leading the Doctor just felt _wrong_.

"Okay, Doctor, level with me—what are we in for?"

"We? Nothing, as far as I know. You're perfectly safe. It only went for me."

"Why?"

"The superior senses of a Time Lord." He chuckled mirthlessly. "It needs only one." There was a pause. "Welllll… I'm fairly sure. It's a hive sort of thing."

"Run that whole thing by me again… it's draining your senses?"

"Stealing them, yes. I'm guessing the order is based on which ones you wouldn't expect to notice straightaway. I'm sure I lost my sense of taste hours ago. And the caves haven't smelled musty in a while."

Donna wrinkled her nose, for a shameful moment feeling a bit of envy. "They haven't?"

He shook his head.

"All right, so taste, then smell, makes sense… And it's already impossible to see in a dark cave. In general, this is a great place for something like that to live."

"Exactly!" There was a slight pause, and he asked, sounding anxious, "Any sign of an exit yet?"

"Not that I can see," she answered after a quick scan.

"Please move faster," he urged, and she complied, though she was already taxing herself, especially after their long trek. She tried not to let on.

"So, do they steal senses, because… they haven't any of their own?" she asked, trying to understand.

"I believe so."

"Then how did they know we were here?"

"Well it's obvious that they have to have _some_ kind of sense, probably like my…" He trailed off, as if suddenly low on energy, and Donna didn't press him. She knew what he was referring to anyway.

They kept moving, and it seemed to Donna that it was getting easier and easier to make out their surroundings, but the Doctor never indicated that he could see a thing. He was so quiet it worried her.

After several minutes of silence, she said, partly to break the quiet and partly because she was really wondering, "It seems like such a pointless cycle. For something to evolve to not have senses of its own, but with the ability to steal 'em from others."

The Doctor grunted as he tripped slightly for the umpteenth time. Donna grabbed his arm with both hands to right him, and they kept moving. "Good point… Brilliant, in fact. I wish I could give you a good explanation. But sometimes things just don't make sense."

She sighed, acquiescing. "Guess half the beauty of the universe comes from things that don't make sense. Most of the time though, it's more than a slight inconvenience." Forgetting for a moment that it was hardly bright enough to distinguish facial expressions, she glanced in his direction, as his rather recent experience on Midnight reminded her of its existence.

"I'd be lying if I said I weren't fascinated by this, though," he said, and Donna could hear the grin in his voice. Either he hadn't made the same connection she had, or he hadn't been quite as affected by the episode as she'd thought. "I can't hold something like this against such a unique creature. It's just doing what it was equipped by nature to do."

"By taking away what nature has equipped _others_ to do," Donna huffed.

The Time Lord shrugged—and suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. "Give me my screwdriver," he said, reaching out before him.

She obeyed instantly, and he took it, his movements clearly familiar to him. Ignoring the fact that he couldn't see its light, he pointed it upwards, and Donna followed it with her gaze.

She probably wouldn't have noticed before, but there it was—a visible source of light, though she could not quite tell how it was getting in. It just seemed brighter in a certain corner of the cave's roof.

"There," he said, turning the screwdriver off. "You see it?"

"Yes."

"They're so close. If we get out through there they'll be a stone's throw away."

Donna wanted to hug him with relief, but she refrained. They weren't out of the woods yet. Or… caves. _Hah. Hahah._

She realized she was going a bit loony, a result of a combination of the last six hours and her current immense relief.

"Does it look like we can climb up?" the Doctor asked.

Donna bit her lip. "Not really."

"Then…" He trailed off. After a moment, much to Donna's surprise and confusion, he plopped down on the cave floor Indian style and squeezed his eyes shut, massaging his temples with his fingers.

She left him to do what he did best—be enigmatic. And they stayed like that for five more minutes, ten, twenty. She lost track after a while. It was getting more and more difficult to think through her hunger. And she was becoming painfully more aware of the thirst as well.

Her thoughts turned back to the Doctor and his plight. If he'd already lost taste, smell, and sight, then next was probably hearing. What was going to happen when he couldn't hear? Donna herself didn't know much sign language, though she was sure that he did. How would they communicate? He'd be completely helpless…

Donna wasn't sure if she'd be able to handle that.


	5. Chapter 5

_Crack_.

A distinct sound of something breaking echoed through the cavern, startling Donna out of the doze she was beginning to fall into. The Doctor, who hadn't moved for some time, finally lifted his head.

"Where?" he asked.

After a second, realizing that she couldn't point, she said, "Above us…"

"Directly above us?"

Seeing what he was getting at, she grasped his wrist and helped him to his feet, though he wasn't quite so stiff that he required aid, and guided him to the furthest end of the cavern, several metres away.

When she stopped, he asked anxiously, "Are you sure this is safe?"

"If it's not, it's the closest we can get."

Dust was falling from the ceiling, and finally, _finally_ , shafts of light fell through. Donna let out a cry of joy, clasping her hands together. She could _see_ , really _see_ , and it hurt her eyes a little after the long dark but she didn't care, it was _glorious_.

More than dust now—stones as big as her head were coming loose and plummeting down to strike the cave floor very near where they'd been resting. _Thank God for the Doctor_.

And _more light_ , and it was wonderful, and it stretched across the entirety of the cavern and she could _see_. No squinting, no dimness. She could look around her and really see, and she'd never been more thankful for it.

Which reminded her of the fact that the most wonderful man she'd ever known was next to her right now, blind. She turned towards him, already worried, and when she really took a good look at him it was almost horrific.

His eyes… they were unfocused, milky, glazed over. Those deep brown eyes that held wisdom far beyond his appearance—sometimes, she suspected, _too_ much wisdom… and now they were sightless, dead. He was just staring ahead, unable to partake in her relief.

"Doctor," she said softly, but the falling rocks were making too much of a racket for her to be heard, so she grasped his arm, and he turned his head towards her slowly. He still wasn't focusing on her, and this was even worse than before. Because he was turned _towards_ her, he _should_ be able to see her. He was the Doctor, he saw everything.

But he couldn't.

When the cave was finally quiet, she looked up and could just make out figures. They had created an opening a few feet across, definitely enough for her and the Doctor to get through.

"Doctor," Donna said again, and he moved to face her again. She sent up a silent prayer of thanks that he could still hear her.

The figures above them called down, "Hello! Can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear," the Doctor called back up, and Donna couldn't hold back a smile at finally hearing him sound confident again, "but I'm afraid that won't last long for me."

A moment of silence. And then the figures were scrambling around, frantic and chaotic. Another voice came, "Come over just below us, quickly."

They both stood, and did as they were told. A brief sound of rummaging around. Then, "Catch these."

Two small objects came plummeting down, and Donna raised her hands, nervous about missing. She caught one, and the other one glanced off her fingers and hit the Doctor in the shoulder. He blinked, and looked down in the general direction of where it had landed. "What's that?"

The items were small pouches, made of some material Donna didn't recognize. She opened one cautiously, to find it filled with small objects about the size and shape of contact lenses, but sturdier, with tiny depressions covering them. She handed the pouch to the Doctor and bent over to pick the second one up. "What are these?" she called.

"Put them on your fingers and toes," came the reply after a slight delay, and Donna looked over in confusion at the Doctor, who obviously was not aware of her gaze, and who was already following the instructions they had been given.

"What are—" she started.

"Just do it, Donna," he said, an edge to his voice. "Quickly!"

She complied, remembering how panicked he had seemed. It was strange—after she'd covered one hand of fingers with the strange little objects, she went to do the same to her other hand, and she couldn't really feel them on her first hand anymore. Her fingertips just felt a little bumpy. It was disconcerting, but she shrugged it off for the Doctor's sake.  
When she had finished with her hands, she hesitated, and looked over at the Doctor. He was already removing his trainers and placing the objects on his toes. Donna held back a sigh and sat down, pulling her own shoes off.

She stood up when she finished, about the same time the Doctor did. "Now what?" she said, still completely lost.

The Doctor replied readily, as he shoved his shoes and socks into his large pockets, "Show me to the wall. Beneath the opening, the cave wall."

Donna guided him the few steps forward and placed his hands on the wall. He turned his head slightly in her direction, and said only, "Climb."

"Climb," she repeated after a surprised moment. "What, up the walls of the cave?"

"Yes," he answered.

"Like Spider-man?"

"If you like," he said with a little shrug. "Now go! You before me."

Uncertain, she reached out and placed her hand on the cave wall. And she placed the other above it. She braced her foot against the stone, and, not sure what she was expecting to happen, hoisted herself up.

And it worked.

She stayed there, hanging from the wall, stunned. After a few seconds of silence, "Hurry up, Donna!" came from behind her, and the Doctor actually sounded very panicked for a moment, and she hurriedly began ascending the wall. She wondered, briefly, if he had been afraid that his hearing had gone as well.

Donna was already a quarter of the way up. It was incredible; her fingers and toes just stuck to the stone wall. She didn't have to bother with handholds or footholds, she could just _go_.

She was enjoying herself immensely, though she'd never been one for climbing. It was so easy. But apparently there was no time for enjoyment, because now she was going too slowly for the natives waiting above them and the Doctor was behind her sounding almost hysterical with urgency and that was enough that she practically flew up the cave wall. Before she knew it, she was being helped through the opening and into the light and she tumbled onto the grass, breathless.

The Doctor was right behind her, and the people around them hastened to help him much more carefully than they had Donna. She watched as three of them grasped him by the forearms and pulled him out. His blank stare unnerved Donna once again, and she averted her eyes.

Chaos had erupted around her. They were all speaking to each other anxiously, loudly, and rapidly, and it hurt Donna's ears, especially after the long silence. She just wanted them to shut up. But perhaps they were talking about the Doctor… perhaps they could help him.

She was pulled to her feet, and then the Doctor was next to her and she was being ushered forward, and she went willingly. She gave a sidelong glance to the Doctor, who she could now see more clearly than ever. Sweat was shining on his forehead, and he was obviously afraid. She saw that expression on him so rarely…

She slid her hand into his, and after a moment, he clutched it tightly as if it were a lifeline.


	6. Chapter 6

It was a hospital, of sorts. Only there didn't seem to be any doctors. Well, there was one, of course. But he wasn't exactly in top form at the moment.

They rushed him inside and got him into a bed, but then their chatter began to die down. Donna waited for a few tense moments before blurting, "Well, isn't anyone going to help him?"

The natives all looked at her with large, sad eyes. They were small in every respect. Skinny, and short, the tallest of them barely reaching Donna's shoulders. Their skin was a greyish-blue, making them all look sickly by human standards. Their eyes were large and animal-like, but intelligent. They had long fingers and short black hair.

That was as far as Donna's analysis went. She wanted an answer. She crossed her arms, and one spoke up. Female, definitely, and young. She _looked_ young, anyway. "He's got a sixth sense, hasn't he?" she asked, and her voice was a little raspy. "That's how he contacted us. We were nearby, and he sent us a message."

"He's right there, why aren't you talking to him?" Donna said, frustrated, and then froze. "He… He hasn't…"

"I can hear you, Donna," said the Doctor, who was sat up in the bed, still staring ahead of himself sightlessly.

Donna let out a weak sigh of relief. Her brief smile melted off her face when she saw one Cirulian approaching the Doctor, holding a cup of what was apparently medicine. "What's that?"

The Cirulian reached out towards the cuff of the Doctor's trousers, and grasped it, pausing briefly to give Donna a glance. Donna wasn't sure what that glance was supposed to say. She saw pity in it, perhaps. Perhaps a warning.

And then he pulled up the cuff and revealed his ankle, and Donna's hand flew to her mouth in horror. All of the Cirulians grimaced.

Something parasitic, he had said. " _Something parasitic in these caves. Now it's made me its host._ "

It was completely black, and bare, and _wriggling._ It was actually moving around, just a bit—doing what exactly, Donna couldn't know. A shiver travelled up her spine as she stared at it in morbid fascination. It was about four inches across, and she couldn't see any eyes or any other distinguishing features on it… really she didn't know _what_ to think of it. Whatever it was, it had blinded the Doctor and it was draining him even now and because of that, she _hated_ it.

"That's it?" she said quietly. "That's what's taking your senses?"

The Doctor exhaled, and nodded.

"Well, get it off him!" Donna demanded, and the Cirulian who had revealed the parasite poured the cup over the creature, revealing it to have been full of some green liquid. The creature wriggled violently for just a second or two before going still.

"Is it dead?" she asked in a hushed tone.

The Cirulian turned to her, eyes large and sad. "I'm sorry. There's not much else we can do."

The Doctor closed his eyes and drew a breath in slowly, as if he had suspected this were the case.

Donna's expression froze, and she stared at him for a long moment. "What?"

"Donna, come over here," the Doctor said, extending a hand towards her without actually turning to face her. "There isn't much time."

She rushed over to his side and took his hand in hers, which he gripped tightly. When he spoke, his voice was low and quiet. "If there's nothing they can do, I'm going to lose it all. Hearing, and finally touch. I won't be able to communicate with you in any way, or at least a way that you're familiar with. But I'm certain it'll leave me my sixth sense."

"Why would it do that?" Donna whispered, afraid for him.

"Because it's already got one. This lot, they don't, so they're left with nothing. Right now it's draining me, so I can't talk with it yet, but once it's done, and before it detaches itself from me, I'm going to communicate with it. Try to negotiate."

"Negotiate?" she asked dubiously. "What can you offer it?"

"Good question, that. Very pertinent." He smiled grimly. "I've a couple of ideas."

"You really think it'll even listen?"

"I've got to hope," and his voice cracked. Donna gripped his hand even tighter.

"Sir—" one of the Cirulians began.

"Doctor," the Doctor said only.

The speaker paused. "Doctor, then. If we remove it now, we can save your hearing and touch."

"You can?" Donna said, surprised.

"No," the Doctor said immediately. "Then I still can't see or smell or taste. I don't want to live like that. Like this."

"It's all we can offer."

"That green stuff," Donna spoke up. "What was that?"

"It slows down the process," the Cirulian replied. "Doesn't stop it, but it helps."

"Would've appreciated the opportunity to not give permission," the Doctor said sourly. "I want it to finish. Sooner rather than later."

The natives looked taken aback. Donna didn't know what to say. She looked to the Doctor, as usual, for comfort. And then she felt selfish.

"If I don't come out of this," the Doctor said, and Donna tightened her grip on his hand, "go back to the TARDIS. There is a key in my coat's left pocket."

Donna glanced over at his coat, which the Cirulians had relieved him of and draped over the back of a chair. She looked back to him, swallowing her fear.

"When I lose touch, I'm going to shut my body down. A self-induced coma. I don't know when I'm going to lose hearing, but it's been a while since I've lost sight, so it can't be too long. For now, I want you to get something to eat and drink."

She gaped at him for a moment. "I'm not hungry anymore," she whispered.

"Eat anyway," he replied, whispering as well.

After a short pause, one of the nearest Cirulians said, sounding a little uncomfortable, "We'll go get you something, shall we?"

They all cleared out of the room, about half a dozen of them. Donna was grateful for the privacy. She looked back to the Doctor, who was smiling a small, sad smile.

"You know," she said, "I never told anyone what happened to me on my would-be wedding day, except for my grandfather, Wilfred. Well, I started to, anyway. He never even asked for the full story. He just believed me. Stargazer, he is. Always workin' on his telescope. I guess it's in my blood to want to explore, and understand what's out there. I'm sure that if you'd come when Grampa was younger he would have come travellin' with you in a heartbeat. But… and I know this sounds selfish… I'm glad you didn't."

The Doctor was listening. He wasn't smiling anymore, but he had turned his head, if not his gaze, slightly towards her.

She kept talking. It was all she could do.

* * *

The Cirulians did bring in food, but Donna didn't even glance at it. Nothing in this world or any other was more important than talking to the Doctor, telling him stories, keeping him attached to reality.

There had been no unusual break in her speech, but suddenly, in mid-sentence, the Doctor lifted his head from where it had been previously resting against the wall behind him, and said, alarmed, "Donna?"

She bit back tears. Of course she knew what had happened. She took both the Doctor's hands in hers and said, "I'm here."

"Donna?" he said almost immediately, in a louder voice, and after a very brief pause, he took a shuddering breath. "Donna, I can't hear the sound of my own voice."

"Doctor," she said, and a tear leaked out of her eye. She couldn't help it. She wiped it away with her thumb and clasped his left hand between both of hers, taking in a deep breath that shuddered just as his had. "You better come back to me, Spaceman."


	7. Chapter 7

_Chapter 7 is here! Fair warning, there's going to be a bit of a break between this and the next one… for which I do apologize._

 _Do I need to be putting disclaimers on every chapter…? Well, I still don't own Doctor Who._

* * *

He didn't know if that had come out right. It felt correct in his mouth, but he wasn't sure if it had been quite clear, so he tried repeating it. Again, he was unsure, so he went ahead and, just for good measure, said it a third time, more slowly than ever.

It was unnerving, to say the least, and a sensation—or lack thereof—that he could have gone his whole long life without.

The sound of Donna's voice had been fading for a while. He'd refused to showcase the growing terror he was truly feeling, for Donna's sake. He still did. He just hoped he'd been able to keep it out of his voice… He had no way of gauging his success in that regard.

It was just a matter of waiting till the creature sucked away his sense of touch. He wasn't sure if it would be faster since it was all that was left—indeed, he'd had no way of timing the intervals between the loss of each previous sense, so he wasn't even sure if the process had been shortening at all. No reason to believe it had been, he supposed. He and Donna were in this for the long haul.

In truth, this was the most disturbing experience he'd had in a very long time. Total silence, total blackness. He hoped they wouldn't try to feed him anything or his added inability to smell or taste it might overwhelm him.

As a result, he groped around a lot. He could no longer hear the slight creak of the bedframe whenever he shifted, but he could feel the thin softness of his covers. He could no longer hear the hustle and bustle of passing Cirulians, but he could, with Donna's assistance, swing his legs out to the side and touch his feet to the cold, hard floor. He couldn't hear Donna's voice, but he could grip her hand tight as he wanted. Every so often he'd let up though, afraid he was hurting her—he couldn't tell by her face or pick up any small cries of pain, of course, and he doubted she'd pull away from him under the circumstances.

It made him worry—not that he'd ever let on—about what she would do if he lost everything and couldn't get it back.

* * *

He didn't say much if he could help it. At one point, he couldn't stand the not knowing anymore and asked how long it had been. He articulated carefully, and said the question twice to be sure. In response, after several seconds, Donna took his hand gently and traced something onto his palm that he didn't quite catch.

"Has it been an hour yet?" he asked, still speaking carefully but not bothering this time to repeat himself. Donna seemed to be getting it. "Tap once for yes and twice for no."

Another pause. Donna's finger touched the centre of his palm two times.

He sank into the bed in despair. "Almost, though?"

One tap. Thank God.

A stretch of silence that was probably much shorter than it felt. "I take it you don't know sign language."

Two taps. He could sense how apologetic she was. Normally his sixth sense wouldn't be necessary for picking such things up—he realized it was kicking in a bit more now that he was so short in most other areas of perception.

"I'll try to tell you when I lose touch, but you'd be surprised how hard it is to feel confident that you're communicating effectively when you can't hear yourself, let alone feel the movement of your mouth" was the message he intended to impart next, but at least three separate times he thought he stumbled over a word and had to backtrack, and by the end he had no idea how much had actually gotten through. He felt an involuntary grunt of frustration in his throat—and then Donna, bless her heart, squeezed his hand. He took that as a signal that she'd understood. It was a nice thought, anyway.

Having experienced the attempt to send such a long message and having to be content with not knowing how successful he'd been left him feeling rather lethargic, and he slipped back into uncommunicativeness after that. Oh, one could say "silence," but it was all the same to him.

* * *

After a while more he felt Donna's left hand take his as her right placed something into his grasp—a bowl, it felt like. His fingers traced its rim gently. Small one, no bigger than his palm, and cleaned recently, if he were to judge by the soothing warmth of its surface.

Even as he wondered why Donna had given it to him, he gripped it tightly, and suddenly the answer was obvious.

A small toy came next. It was some type of Cirulian animal, though he wasn't so familiar with Cirulian zoology so he couldn't get much more specific. Its fur was coarse, its eyes were something like what Earth called marbles, and it had a long tail made of a thin rope. Must have come from some waiting room.

Third was a glass of water—or at least he could imagine it was water. Had the consistency of it, anyway. He was thankful to be familiar with some liquid that had no taste at all, and began to wonder why there wasn't a food like that. Donna helped him drink, and he relished in the feel of the cool liquid running down his throat. When it was gone, he ran his fingers all around the cup. Its outside surface was interestingly bumpy. He wondered if Cirulians needed the extra grip, and it occurred to him that he still didn't know what they looked like.

Donna kept the items coming. He beamed with each new toy to examine—somehow it was eye-opening (not literally of course—if only) to have only one sense to use to take in the world around him. Or, as it happened, directly before him. He noticed things he probably would never have noticed before. She handed him a couple of medical instruments—blunt, simple ones, naturally—a scrap of paper, a length of fabric, a piece of jewelry. He wasn't sure how she was getting the Cirulians to donate so many things to the "Keep the Doctor entertained" effort, but he wasn't exactly surprised—she could be mighty persuasive. At one point she handed him what he realized within moments was his screwdriver, and immediately he pointed it in her general direction and grinned.

He was trying to remain and, more important, appear as content as possible. It was the only way he could comfort her anymore.

* * *

Hours must have passed, but Donna had not wavered in her steady supply of objects for him to inspect and toy with. The experience of losing the sense of touch was much odder than hearing—the only other one he'd actually been aware was slipping from his grasp—had been. There were not typically degrees of touch. You could not muffle touch. The nearest sensation he could equate it to was the awareness that your foot was falling asleep. Only it was his entire body, and as much as he shifted around, he could not shake it. He was losing the awareness of the position of his legs on the mattress, his arms beside him, whether he was resting his head against the wall or not. When he said "Donna, I'm losing it," it was early enough to do so without mishap, but when it occurred to him maybe twenty minutes later to command, "Lay me down, make sure I'm flat on my back," he was vaguely aware that he'd bitten his tongue. The pain was fuzzy, but he really couldn't know for certain how serious it was (he had no sense of taste to rely on to alert him to the presence of blood, after all). Moments later he could barely tell whether or not Donna had done as he instructed, but something had definitely changed about his position, and he absolutely trusted her.

When he aimed to say "Catch you on the flip side" and attempted a smile, he had absolutely no idea how successful he'd been. For all he knew, rather than the smooth exit he normally went for he may have just appeared to be gargling his own saliva. He shuddered at the thought.

Mid-shudder, as if someone had flipped a switch, he realized he couldn't feel a thing. And for one profoundly terrifying moment, he was floating in nothing. Blackness stretched before, behind, above, and below him. He stared into the void, unfeeling of his own body. He couldn't feel the mild chill of the room he knew his body to be in. He couldn't feel his heartbeat. He couldn't feel the air entering and exiting his lungs.

As quickly as he could manage, in a burst of panic he could not feel the physical manifestation of, he called upon his sixth sense and pushed himself into true unconsciousness.

Where awaited the creature that had stolen everything from him.


	8. Chapter 8

_Well, I definitely did not have in mind a break this long. I apologize, and hope it was worth the wait._

 _Big thanks to everyone who's reviewed—between this chapter and the last, the number of reviews for this story finally surpassed the number of chapters, which I find pretty exciting. All your comments are very much appreciated._

 _thisdayandage—The Doctor would be able to feel the shape and motions of Donna's hands, Helen Keller style._

* * *

He was not alone. It wasn't something he could explain his knowledge of in any human terms. Gallifreyan had words for it, certainly. But it wasn't really relevant now. No spoken language was. Using his mind only, he reached out into the void, towards the consciousness that he knew was inside him, and sent the simple message … _Hello?_

A long pause followed. He felt the foreign being sizing him up. He felt its surprise at his ability to communicate—which was admittedly interesting. He'd assumed it had known that his senses were superior to those of the type of host it would typically hope to find, but it hadn't been aware of his extra one.

Finally he felt it, a brief but definite reply: _Hello._

He was excited but apprehensive. It had been a long time since he'd conducted a conversation solely using this sense. It created a very profound bond between the participants, but… sometimes too profound for his tastes. Barriers were harder to construct. You could filter your spoken words with deliberation in a way you couldn't filter your thoughts.

 _Hello_ , he said again. _I'm the Doctor._ The feeling, the purely mental representation of this name he went by was decidedly comforting. He hoped that would work in his favor, that it would appeal to this creature—let it know what he could do.

The pause was shorter this time, and then it, in turn, introduced itself. There was no way to articulate this introduction. But the images that its mental translation appeared as—they were of a dankness, an apprehension, a _hope_ that the Doctor hadn't expected. Its being was defined by… waiting. How fascinating. And yet with it came a distinct… ambition. Not necessarily a dangerous kind. Really quite a humble one, if that was even possible.

The Doctor hoped he was interpreting correctly.

 _Pleased to meet you_ , he said friendlily. He felt the reception of the message, but there was radio silence after that. That was fair, he supposed. He was the one who'd initiated the interaction. He ought to explain his reasons. _You've taken something from me._

 _Five things, actually._

He paused. He would have blinked if he had any discernible connection to his body anymore. _They're rather important to me. Very much, in fact. I just want to make sure you understand what you're doing._

 _Their importance to you is irrelevant. I need them._

Well that didn't sound very friendly at all. _It happens that I do too, and I'm afraid I had them first_ , he said, genuinely apologetic.

 _You can manage without them just as well as we have been. Regardless, it is no concern of ours._

 _You say that, but see, you're used to managing without them. I fly a time machine. I help people. I need the senses you've taken to live my life._

 _Your time machine... Is that what you told the female to get the key for? Your TARDIS?_

In his surprise, for a long moment he did not respond.

The creature seemed to sense his nonspecific and unsent query. _At any given time since I attached to you, I have been able to tap into the senses I had not yet taken—see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt._

 _Really?_ He was rather disturbed by this.

 _Much of the time I was not focused on your experiences. I had a task to fulfill._

 _Listen, I want to help you with that, I do, it's just…_ He didn't plan the sentence beforehand. The rest just sort of formed on its own, and it surprised even him. _The last time I said "I'll help you" to a creature without knowing its true intentions… It didn't go so well._

 _Yes, I found that time in your mind. Midnight. You were paralyzed with the cold, weren't you? You hadn't been that cold in a very long time._

He was unresponsive for a moment, a bit shocked, and unsure of how to reply.

 _I didn't, couldn't, look at most of your memories—just the more short-term ones, the ones very fresh in your mind, the ones you've put yourself through often and recently. That one was interesting to me, you see. I've never felt the cold at all._

 _Too much…_ He fumbled, grasping for words. In a few moments he managed to right himself, cursed himself for the moment of vulnerability, and hoped it wouldn't affect negotiations. _Too much can be a bad thing. But none whatsoever… I can't imagine a world so stifling. But like I said to that woman, or rather the creature inside her, whatever you want—and fortunately, this time, I'm pretty sure I know—you don't have to steal it._

 _But I do. And I have._

It wasn't sorry. There was no malice, no intent to harm—it was just doing what it was made for.

 _No, listen. You told me that when you were draining me, you could experience everything I was experiencing. I mean, basically._

 _Yes._

 _Could you maintain that state for a prolonged amount of time? Voluntarily?_

 _I could._

He was getting excited. _Then we have no problem here. Give me back my senses, and we can share them._

There was no response for some time, though he had no way of gauging just how much. Finally came a simple command: _Explain._

 _I'm an accommodating man. You're on my ankle, fine. I can deal with that. If you return my senses to me, you can experience the world—many worlds—through me. I won't try to remove you, I promise._

 _Like a parasite?_

 _Like… a companion. I've already got one, in fact. Very nice, her name's Donna._

 _Yes. The female with lesser senses._

 _Just the hand she was dealt. But she makes up for it in wit._

 _You are proposing that I return to you the use of the senses I have taken, but still stay on your body._

 _Of course you can stay as long as you like, but you'll probably want to detach and see things for yourself at some point. I don't know how to facilitate that, but trust me, I will find a way to. I've got a very good track record._

 _You misunderstand my purpose, Doctor. I do not work alone. I am to return these abilities to my colony. We will enjoy them for a decade or so, and then, as the new generation takes form, we will need to harvest again. Though we will not be likely to have anywhere near immediate success._

 _How? How are you going to get back to the cave? You must have noticed we left it._

 _I noticed a distinct change in environment. I noticed the collective consciousness of my brethren becoming alarmingly distant._

 _Listen, I'll help your entire family if you want me to._

 _You cannot. It is beyond you._

 _Don't be so sure._ He knew it would be able to sense his certainty.

There was a pause. _What could you do?_

 _Oh, it's a simple matter of finding creatures with senses to spare, creatures willing to give them up. The ill, the near death. We may not even need to leave the planet to find enough volunteers for as many colonies as the caves may hold. We may not even need to leave this building._

Another pause. Pauses were a good sign. But this time the reply was almost… nervous. _How do you know of the other colonies?_

He wanted to grin. He wished he could feel his cheeks. _A door, once opened, may be stepped through in either direction._

He sensed its surprise. He sensed it… sensing something. _You have used these words before._ Well, a more direct translation would have been _You have sent this message before._ They were not communicating in words.

 _Not quite. They've been used on me. Listen, I can tell you're not malicious. You're just doing your ascribed duty. I promise I will help you go above and beyond it. I can help you help all those like you in your caverns._

 _You cannot make that promise. Your senses are superb, and I already have them. They would power my colony for a generation._

 _And then what? I can help you form a peace with the above-grounders. They could donate their senses to you for generations to come. Me, with my sixth sense, that allows me to communicate with you—I'm the link you've been missing. I can help._

It was considering it. He could tell. But he'd be admittedly surprised if it agreed so quickly to jeopardize the success of its one function as a member of its colony.

 _Tell you what_ , he said. _You can stay on my ankle. You can drain me again if I go against my word. Hell, you can keep my senses of taste and smell as leverage, just to be sure I'll have some concrete and ulterior motivation. I need the other three just to function normally or I'd offer them too._

It responded surprisingly quickly considering its message's content. _I will require time to consider this._

He paused, taking this in. _Ah. That's fair._

Silence after that.

Time passed. He didn't know how quickly. But as it crawled by, the void became less and less bearable, and more and more stifling. It was more debilitating than normal unconsciousness. It was a complete lack of sensation.

He knew he had the ability, the option, to leave it. To pull himself into the typical unawareness of unconsciousness, and be numb to it all. Here he felt raw, naked, on a mental level. But he had to stay and wait. If he didn't, he wouldn't be here to hear the creature's reply, when it came.

He hovered on the brink of nothing, and tried to focus on remembering what something, everything, _any_ _thing_ felt like.


	9. Chapter 9

_While writing this chapter I realized that "Cirulian" is phonetically only one consonant switch away from "Silurian" (Madame Vastra's race, the prehistoric lizards, if you didn't remember). Was anybody ever going to notice and say anything? That is the question... Which I suppose we now will never be able to answer. Oh well. I'll leave it. At least the consonant switch is indeed there and it's not just a transcription difference._

* * *

Donna had never seen the Doctor so still.

Really, she'd hardly been aware Time Lords slept. The way he bounced all over the place and ran everywhere he went and never seemed low on energy had led her to the tentative belief that perhaps they didn't at all.

Yet here he was, breathing slow and deep through his partially opened mouth, moving the hair hanging down over his forehead ever so slightly. His fingers twitched every once in a while, but otherwise he was perfectly still. She wondered what it must be like to have a conversation mind-to-mind. She wondered if it was faster or slower than normal oral conversation.

After ten minutes of sitting there holding his limp hand and crying a little to herself, she placed it neatly at his side, wiped her eyes dry, and drew herself up in determination. She would not spend this time idly. She'd learn what she could.

She flagged down a passing Cirulian in the hall and asked it in her best authoritative voice, "Who do I talk to around here if I got questions?"

"That would be Ilseg," the creature said, and Donna couldn't for the life of her identify this one as either male or female.

"Illllseggg," she repeated, drawing it out. "Where is this Ilseg? Is he busy?"

"I don't know, miss," the Cirulian said politely. "I can take you to him. Please follow me."

She cast a glance back at the Time Lord lying near-motionless in the flimsy bed behind her. "I don't… I don't want to leave him."

"I can notify someone to stay with him, if that would comfort you."

The picture of some little blue alien sitting next to her Doctor to serve as the first face he saw on waking up was not exactly what Donna would call a comfort, but she supposed, if it was this or sit around uselessly… Well, she was going to do something of at least minor import with her time.

"That would be nice, thank you," she finally said.

* * *

The bracelet on her right wrist changed from soft orange to a sunny yellow at some point during the wait for the supposed expert on the cave-dwellers, signaling the passage of twelve hours and definitely at least eleven since this whole fiasco had begun. Donna sighed as she stared down at the trinket, remembering that intergalactic market and how lovely that visit had been.

She was sitting in a too-small white chair in a hallway outside a meeting involving this Ilseg. It had been only about ten minutes but Donna had already gotten fidgety and morphed into a people watcher in the name of the furthering of knowledge. Or rather Cirulian watcher, she supposed. She'd noticed already that though they had long fingers, they seemed to have small, weak thumbs; their bare feet bore four wide, slightly webbed toes; and the males interestingly seemed to have, on average, slightly longer and more styled hair than the females.

It was a pretty entertaining endeavor, but it was cut short when a Cirulian exited the room outside of which she was sitting, and moments later another one came out and said, "Are you Donna Noble?"

Donna stood up. This one was pretty tall; barely a head shorter than Donna herself. He bore a single short, fat braid on his head, and she could somehow tell his admittedly alien attire was professional.

"Yeah," she responded. "Ilseg?"

"I am he," he said. "I am told you have questions."

She nodded. "Nothing too specific. Just what's up with the thing that is currently suckling at the ankle of my best friend."

He nodded knowingly. "The cave parasites. Often we call them 'lauep.' It is an Old Raxian word meaning 'cave-dwellers.'"

Donna realized that there was a decent chance that "Raxian" was the language they were currently speaking. That she probably had been speaking since they entered Cirulian society. But not before; in the hills and the caves it had all been perfect English. Her brain hurt.

Not for the first time she pictured the TARDIS, the Doctor's faithful blue box, a lone figure among the purple hills, translating from afar, and re-experienced the sheer terror at the thought of having to fly it herself, and the implications that came with that.

"They are found only in the cave system into which you unfortunately entered," Ilseg continued, tracing his long fingers over each other. "How did you come by the caverns in the first place, if I may ask?"

Donna scratched her head, remembering the strangeness of it all for the first time in several hours. With the new strangeness, that had become somewhat irrelevant. "The wall collapsed. We were walking in the hills and we stopped outside what the Doctor thought might be a cave and it just came crashing down."

Ilseg frowned. "Hm. We have records of that happening before, but not in quite some time."

"The Doctor talked like they might have wanted him in particular," she said quietly. "'Cause of his super senses."

"I had been meaning to ask, where are the two of you from?"

"He's from Gallifrey. I'm from Earth."

"Fascinating," Ilseg murmured. "How did you get here?"

"He has ways."

"How far away is that? Intergalactic travelers have mentioned Gallifrey—I cannot say I have ever heard of Earth—but we have no sense of distance."

"Weren't we talking about the creatures?" Donna said, slightly annoyed.

"Yes, quite right, that," he conceded apologetically. "I am sorry. It has been hypothesized that when their numbers are great enough in a specified area, they can create a net of psychic energy so intense they are capable of crude manipulation of matter, and can channel this to strategically destruct cave walls in such a way that leaves victims trapped."

"Appreciate the layman's terms, layman," Donna muttered. "Okay, I guess this could be a universe where that makes sense. You said they're just in this one cave system?"

"That is correct."

"How big is the cave system?"

"Many miles, and we are always discovering new branches, though as far as we know our community is the only one anywhere near it."

"Cool, that was going to be my next question." Donna mused. "How big's this community of yours then?"

"Roughly fifteen hundred."

"And how often does one of you lot fall prey to the… cave-dwellers?"

"On average, yearly. Sometimes three will go missing inside a month and all will be well for nearly half a decade, sometimes it happens invariably every winter. They have been plaguing the community ever since we began here centuries ago. But most of us are too afraid to take the fight to the source. The few who have tried have had very limited success."

Donna wrinkled her brow incredulously. "So you just lie down and roll over?"

Ilseg looked confused. "We do nothing of the kind."

She curbed the urge to roll her eyes. "Exactly. You do nothing."

He shook his head. "Regrettably, you are correct. All we can do is keep close tabs on all our members and send fully and carefully clad search parties into the caves when one goes missing. Not too deep, though. But, if those who have been victimized still retain their hearing and can respond to calls, they can be found and saved."

"And by saved," Donna said, "you mean you rip those things off their skin so they get to keep whatever's left of their senses."

"It actually requires a minor surgery to remove them safely, but…" He nodded somberly. "Yes, that is effectively what I mean."

Donna massaged her temples. "And how's your success rate for even finding them?"

After a moment of silence she looked up. "Somber" was no longer quite strong enough a word to describe the Cirulian's expression. "Grave" probably worked better here. "In my three decades of researching this tragedy," he said, "we have found as many in time to save their hearing and touch. One whose only… whose only touch was saved, and many who… were still alive only in the strictest sense."

Donna blinked, picturing a team of Cirulians, going mad with worry for their missing friend, finding that friend twitching vaguely on the stony ground, unresponsive to any and all attempts at communication.

The image of the floorbound Cirulian flickered, unbidden, to that of a glassy-eyed, limp-wristed, open-mouthed Doctor, and Donna quickly pinched the loose skin on her arm, shaking her head to remove the picture from it.

"You left them comatose?" she asked.

"We brought them all back to the community, and the wealthy kept their family members fed and healthy in case we should ever find a cure, but… Most were allowed to pass. There was nothing left for them."

Donna's hands curled into fists of their own accord. She stared in horror at the smaller creature standing in front of her. He shifted uncomfortably, and she whispered, "You _let them die?_ "

"They were already effectively dead," he said, sounding puzzled at her sudden intensity.

"They could _think!_ They couldn't communicate, but their minds were still very much alive! They were completely helpless and you _murdered_ them?"

"The lauep murdered them," he asserted, obviously truly bewildered by this point, but there was an edge to his voice now that hadn't been there before.

Donna gritted her teeth, forcing herself to calm down. This society wasn't as advanced as the one she came from… Perhaps they were still in their Dark Ages… That didn't make this any less horrifying. Admittedly, it was a difficult situation, but…

 _I am proud to be a 21_ _st_ _century Earthling_ , she thought but did not say in front of the creature who probably didn't know about time travel or even alternate calendar systems.

"Well," she said after a time, transitioning to the matter at hand, "the Doctor's not dead. He's alive and kicking in there."

"He does have a sixth sense, I am told," Ilseg agreed. "Something the lauep left behind."

"He's coming back in full force," Donna emphasized calmly. "Maybe if you're lucky he'll even save your community from this."

Ilseg raised an eyebrow (or rather the skin where he would have had an eyebrow, as Donna realized he, along with probably all Cirulians, was lacking in this regard). "If he does recover, I should be _very_ interested to speak with him."

"If," Donna laughed, and Ilseg gave her another prolonged, vaguely confused look, but the word rattled around her brain, refusing to let her ignore the reality of uncertainty.

"Will that be all?" Ilseg asked.

* * *

Donna returned to the Doctor's side to relieve the Cirulian currently watching over him (a female who seemed to be falling asleep when Donna entered), ask a few passing Cirulians some more questions as they came to her (not that any individual had many answers, which was hardly surprising if Ilseg was to be believed), and request some water at some point (though Cirulian water sure tasted wonky).

She spent a lot of time staring at the thing on the Doctor's ankle. It had downgraded from constant wriggling to twitching once every few minutes now. She tried to picture holding any kind of intelligent conversation with it. The imaginary conversation quickly devolved into her squashing it underneath her shoe. She gave up trying to imagine.

If he wasn't going to wake up… When was she supposed to know that? What was she even waiting for? The best case scenario would be the Doctor waking up very soon wearing that cheeky grin of his, completely re-sensified and armed with all the creatures' secrets, ready to go eradicate them. Worst case was… he never woke up? Or he woke up and soon made it clear that he still had no way of absorbing information from the world around him, and she'd have to load him onto the hopefully cooperative and helpful TARDIS and search the stars for a way to fix him.

Actually, she quickly realized, of course that would be preferable to him never waking up. He just had to stay alive. And they could get through this.

Of course, as the time dragged on, and Donna came back to the question of whether mental conversations went more slowly or more quickly than regular ones, she started punching the numbers on how likely that was to happen. On the one hand, he was the Doctor. On the other, he wasn't looking very Doctor-ish right now.

Her hand had been resting in his and her eyes had been trained mindlessly on the tiny dark enemy on his ankle for who knew how long when she felt a slight pressure in her hand and her eyes snapped up.

As far as his eyes, they were wide open, crystal clear, and fixed so specifically and intentionally on hers there was no way it was an accident. The cheeky grin was as present as it had ever been, and he asked, obviously very pleased with himself, "Did you miss me?"


	10. Chapter 10

_This chapter practically wrote itself. So I bring it to you early! I do hope it delivers._

* * *

Donna immediately flung her arms around him, and he returned the embrace with surprising strength—she'd have expected the experience to be somewhat draining, but he was able to match the force she was offering to the hug, which was even impressive on its own considering how much he resembled a beanpole.

"Scared me for a minute there," she whispered.

"I do my best to never stop," he returned, and she couldn't help but smile.

Deeming it enough, she pulled away, turning her attention instantly to the revolting thing below the cuff of his trousers. Forgetting for a moment any talk of "minor surgery," she reached out with every intention of yanking it off, pushing her squeamishness deep down where no one could see it.

She was unfortunately thwarted when the leg she was about to free of a parasite jerked in the direction of the ceiling and bent so that the ankle was covered by the opposite shin. The resounding and alarmed " _NO!_ " that had accompanied the action echoed in her ears, and she looked up at the Doctor, who was staring at her, wide-eyed.

"What?" she asked, bewildered and rather wide-eyed herself.

"Leave it," he said certainly, expression not changing, body still tensed up and gathered away from her, eyes still fixed on her. And besides being totally perplexing, it was beginning to make her uncomfortable.

"'Leave it'? Why? This _thing_ —" and she pointed in the direction of the offending thing—"stole your senses, nearly left you a physical vegetable."

He extended his fingers and turned over his hand in a submissive gesture. "I'm not arguing with that."

"Are you completely back? How did you manage it? What did you say?"

"It was a conversation, Donna. I wasn't the only one saying things." His body finally began to relax, and he leaped off the bed and started brushing himself off and straightening his jacket. "Who's in charge around here?"

* * *

Donna was able to give a concise rundown of everything she'd learned before the two of them left the room. The Doctor listened intently and asked a couple of questions, but didn't offer any of what he himself had gathered in the same time frame. He seemed to be saving it, at least in whole, for a slightly bigger audience. It was logical, but it would have been annoying—if he had for some reason kept uncharacteristically quiet.

"They're actually beautiful creatures, Donna," he kept saying, and "They're really quite humble, you know? All they want is to learn. I love it!" Donna stared at him, and down at his ankle area, and back at his face, and remembered the absolute fear she'd seen on it as they were pulled out of the caves. It was gone now, replaced with wild excitement. And it certainly helped that he'd gotten back into his coat. With his natural inability to quite stick to a walking pace, it seemed just as enthused as it billowed behind him.

A smile found its way onto her face. It was okay not to know everything. She did know that this change signaled clearer skies ahead.

The Doctor's manic energy prompted quick answers out of passersby, and within minutes Ilseg had been located yet again. The alien sat there at his simple desk, hand still gripping some strange writing utensil and poised above some thick paper half-filled with words, and stared up at his two visitors. Donna wasn't sure if he'd seen the Doctor before or not, but if he recognized her, he ought to be able to extrapolate the identity of the man standing next to her.

Sure enough, after a few moments he said in wonderment, "Extraordinary. You shouldn't even be able to stand."

"I can do a lot more than stand, mate," the Time Lord replied without missing a beat, grinning ear to ear. "I can process the sound waves you're putting into the air and find meaning in them. I can rub my vocal cords together to make sounds of my own, and decipher them myself while being sure that you're receiving my message. I can hold myself up and be perfectly aware of my own position. I can walk and run and jump and climb and clack my heels, maybe even all at the same time—I could certainly try it, anyway. I have two beating hearts and if I stand still enough I can feel them both working to keep my body running. I can sit back and listen to the Cascade of Rinsay and the utter symphony it creates and invent my own words to its songs, all while surveying its total eight thousand metres of deep blue waterfalls with my own two eyes. I can certainly try to scale any mountain of the planet Gkra-4 and if I fall and sprain my wrist you can bet my body'll let me know I've done something wrong. I can enjoy a—well, no, I can't enjoy a banana, never mind about that one, we'll get back to it. Point is, Ilseg, I can do anything involving the senses of sight, hearing, and touch, and it's the most incredible thing in the universe, and it was given back to me freely."

"But what about the other two?" Donna asked worriedly at the same time Ilseg said, "But that's impossible. How were you able to make it give them back to you?"

"I spoke with it," he said calmly. "I convinced it to give them back. It _chose_ to acquiesce. I didn't _make_ it do anything."

"You let it keep smell and taste?" Donna tried again.

He nodded. "As leverage. My idea."

"Leverage?" Ilseg's already enormous eyes widened. "You mean it's still on you?"

"It is that. It's no danger to anyone here, and we are no danger to it." The Doctor stared down the much shorter alien severely, presenting these as statements of absolute fact. "I've got some things I need to go over with you."

* * *

"Ridiculous," Ilseg declared.

The Doctor leaned forward in his seat (which hadn't been able to contain him for the entirety of his tale, but he'd returned to it near the end), urgency written large across his face. "I know how it must sound to someone who's lived in this society all his life, but these creatures are just as alive as you are, and they have never meant you any harm."

"I do not care whether they have _meant_ us harm," Ilseg said venomously. "They have _done_ us a great deal. They are the creatures parents tell their younglings stories about to make them behave. We have lost so much to them. They are not to be negotiated with."

Donna gave him a sidelong glance, as the Doctor pressed, "I'm presenting you with a solution. You'd rather continue living in fear? You could make these sacrifices in a controlled way, on your own terms."

"We shouldn't have to make them at all," Ilseg spat.

"So the solution you're proposing," Donna said uncertainly, still trying to wrap her mind around all this, "is that elderly Cirulians—"

"Upper Cirulians," the Doctor corrected.

Donna thought about that. It was true that these cave-dwellers—lauep, as Ilseg had called them—were also of the planet Cirula. "Okay, that elderly _Upper_ Cirulians… 'donate' their senses?"

He nodded.

"Doctor," Donna said quietly, "I can't picture giving away something so crucial to human"—she grimaced—"interaction, no matter how old and frail I was. Especially if I had no clue about the effort I was furthering."

"Ah, but you see," the Doctor said excitedly, "after it accepted my offer, I asked it some more questions. It wouldn't answer all of them, but it told me a bit about its colony and the way the colonies function. And they don't all look like the one on my ankle."

Ilseg's skin visibly darkened, which was interesting, though Donna didn't know enough about his race to be able to tell what that entailed. As for Donna herself, she froze. "What do you mean?" she whispered.

"It's a 'gatherer,'" the Doctor explained animatedly, standing up again without appearing to realize he was doing it. "It's the simplest kind. There aren't even that many of them. They're the ones that collect senses for every new generation. There's only more than one of them per colony as insurance, because if there were just one it would probably fail.

"Then there is the next rank up, and I didn't get a very clear picture, but they definitely felt more advanced, and several times bigger. They're the ones that gather food, take care of the young, you know. Very common, they make up most of the colony.

"And then, AND THEN" and he came this close to shouting, obviously very enthused about whatever was coming up if the grin lighting up his face was anything to go by, "there is the reason for the sense thieves, the crowning glory of the species, the purpose they work towards, the most precious treasure inside those caves—the workers. They are the ones who need the senses, because they are the ones who _dream_. They're the smartest, but beyond that, they are the most creative. When new ones are born, the gatherers are sent out to supply them with ways to take in the world, and to _add_ something to it. They learn as much as they can. And they build. Not just so their colony has somewhere to call home, but for the _sake of building._ Picture it—a species that has evolved not just to survive, but to _learn_. To _explore._ It's quite honestly the most inspiring thing I've heard of in a very long time."

Donna's brain was working furiously to process this. With this description, if she could just accept it, suddenly everything turned upside down. Though she had to wonder how much of a difference this would really make if somebody else had relayed it to her as the Doctor remained stretched before her, senseless.

Meanwhile Ilseg was sitting perfectly still, the papers before him long forgotten—everything long forgotten, apparently. "What?" he finally whispered, horror filling his wide dark eyes. "They're _advancing?_ "

"Progressing," the Doctor agreed. "At an incredible rate, too. In the last few hundred years alone they've evolved hands with opposable thumbs and their brain capacities have expanded immensely. At this point they remain in the caves only because they know they're not physically prepared to fight off Upper Cirulians, and they're afraid."

" _They're_ afraid of _us?_ " Ilseg clarified contemptuously.

"Very much," the Doctor said calmly. "They're aware of what they've had to take from you. They're not sorry for doing it—it's all they have. But they know the difference it makes to you. They know what would happen to their colonies if they couldn't hide themselves so well."

"You think I ought to feel guilty that they're right?" Ilseg spat. "All I want is to protect my people. I owe these filthy cave-dwellers _nothing_. And if you think otherwise, Doctor, I don't believe we can call ourselves allies."

This wasn't going as well as it could be. Donna could feel the tension in the room's atmosphere. Moreover, she could _see_ it in Ilseg's stormy eyes.

"Things could be different," the Doctor urged.

"You visited us, our planet," Ilseg said carefully, the strain evident in his voice. "You came in the middle of a natural and ongoing war, you were taken in by our enemy, victimized by them, yet still you take their side. I do not know if you are blindly faithful or simply mad. But I cannot have you doing anything to put my community in danger."

"So what are you gonna do?" Donna asked, amused despite herself at anything resembling a threat coming from this creature the size of a preteen.

"You will leave this facility, this community, this planet, immediately," Ilseg said through tight lips. "If you are seen again I will have you imprisoned."

Donna stood up automatically. She still wasn't feeling particularly intimidated, but… perhaps lingering much longer wasn't the wisest idea.

"You're making a mistake, Ilseg," the Doctor warned, an old fire burning in his eyes.

"Even if that were true, it is mine to make," the alien responded hatefully. "Now get out of my sight."

Never one to give up—or readily obey authority—the Doctor simply seated himself back in his chair, leaning forward so much it almost brought him to Ilseg's eye level. "I promise I am taking no side here," he said seriously. "I have _everyone's_ best interests at heart. Their colonies', and your community's. I have plenty of experience with this kind of thing, and I have thought this through. I know you have suffered. But I _can_ help you."

For the first time, Ilseg seemed to waver, if only showing it through a slight flicker of his large eyes from the Doctor's eyes to his tie. But he resumed eye contact quickly, and after only a few seconds' pause, he said, slowly and deliberately, "I will say this only once more." His tone left no room for argument as he commanded, "Get out."

For a long moment, neither of them broke eye contact. From what Donna could tell, they were matched in determination, but Ilseg was decidedly… angrier. Tense silence hung in the air.

The Doctor suddenly stood up, spun around, and marched out of the room. Donna cast one last glance towards Ilseg, and accidentally met his eyes. He stared into her almost murderously, seeming to transfer his rage from the now-absent Doctor to her, and she wasted no time in hustling out of the room after the Time Lord.


	11. Chapter 11

_Well! It has been far too long. I apologize sincerely; hit a rut with this one. But I think I've finally figured out where I'm headed with this story, and while I can't promise consistency with the time between updates, I will tell you there is no way I'm not finishing._

 _I will warn you that I'm not quite sure what's holding this chapter together. But it's definitely necessary and hopefully you can find some enjoyment in reading it._

* * *

Donna hurried out of the room, feeling an almost physical discomfort at the pure venom in Ilseg's eyes. It didn't help that they didn't much resemble human eyes to begin with.

She caught up to the Doctor in the hall and asked breathlessly, "What now?"

"There's no way he speaks for the entire community," he said readily, and she could almost see the gears spinning like mad in his head. "He might be the head of this research facility, or hospital, or whatever this is, but he can't make decisions for the whole of his people."

"So then who can we go to?" Donna asked uncertainly. "Or should we even go to any individual? _That_ might happen again."

"True, and I hesitate to defer to a crowd, but we may have to." He skidded around a corner, and there stood four Cirulians, having a conversation. They looked up, their eyes understandably drawn to two very tall, pink, light-haired aliens marching around in their strange clothes.

But that wasn't all.

"You're the foreigners," one said, blank-faced.

"There were only two of them, right?" another whispered, more audibly than probably intended.

A third finally asked, "How are you both awake?"

The Doctor spread his arms out wide, always one for the theatrical, and announced, "Hello, yes, the one who was fished out of the caves tasteless and nose blind and just plain blind, that was me, and I'm back, not by force, but by mercy." He reached one hand down to slightly pull up the leg of his trousers, and gestured towards his ankle with the other.

It took a moment for the four of them to find what he was pointing at and identify it, but when they did they uttered a collective cry of alarm, flinching back, unconsciously trying to shield themselves from the creature using each other. The Doctor put both his hands out and reassured, "No, no, no, look, it's fine. I'm fine. I can see and hear and feel and an hour ago I couldn't do any of that, I was done, kaput. Yet now I have been re-sensified. How is this possible?"

"It's not," one of them, a female, said uncertainly.

The Doctor looked at her, unimpressed, and Donna couldn't hold back a smile. "I want you to take another look at me, and then try again."

"But… But this is incredible," said another female, staring openly down at the Doctor's ankle, though he had dropped the leg of his trousers and thusly covered the creature. "You were drained and then… refilled? How is that possible?"

"Well I didn't wrestle my senses back, I'll tell you that much," he said earnestly. "I'm not capable of that."

She blinked. "It… _gave_ them back?"

In a short moment he closed the distance between them, displaying, not for the first time, his lack of comprehension of the notion of personal space, and visibly startling her. At the same time he cried, "Absolutely it gave them back! Never before happened, right? Maybe you never even considered it could. But here I am, walking, talking proof that they can be reasoned with. Tell someone—tell everyone! This is the biggest news you're likely ever to hear!" And he took off down the hallway so suddenly and so fast that Donna had to stand there processing it all for a moment before she could begin to chase after him, leaving the Cirulians with eyes full of questions and no real answers at all.

"Okay," she huffed on catching up with him, "you want everyone to know, but what's the endgame? How do you intend to actually convince them of anything? Is there a plan here?"

"Donna, of course I have a plan," he responded, sounding almost offended, as he skidded around a corner.

She was dubious, but she said, only half-expecting an actual answer, "Fine. What's step two then?"

Slowing down for a moment, he said predictably matter-of-factly, "Haven't gotten to step two yet. It's a plan, it's just an incomplete plan."

"Sure," she replied, totally unsurprised, but skidded to a halt that came this close to disaster, as the Doctor had inexplicably stopped in his tracks to stare at something on the wall. Instead of colliding with him full force, she nearly tripped over her own feet trying to shift her momentum so she'd end up next to him, and would have fallen on her head if he hadn't grabbed her shoulder to steady her.

"What the bloody—" she sputtered, and naturally he immediately released her arm to cover her mouth.

She slapped his hand away, and was about to give him a piece of her mind when he said, sounding completely unaware of how close she'd come to smashing him into the wall, "Donna. The caves."

Finally she took a moment to focus on what he was looking at so fixedly: a map of the caverns. An extremely incomplete one, but a map nonetheless, drawn precisely but simply and color-coded by areas of highest danger.

She didn't see what was so special about the map itself, but she had a creeping suspicion about what ideas it might have triggered in him, and she didn't like it one bit. "What about the caves?"

Once again whatever machinery ran that brilliant mind of his was practically throwing out sparks, and she could easily imagine smoke leaking out of his ears.

After several seconds, he only looked at her, and grinned.

* * *

It was incredibly impressive how many Upper Cirulians he managed to pick up in their frenzied exit from the unfamiliar building. The entire place was buzzing with activity by the time they found the door, and over a dozen of them were trailing behind the two foreigners—hesitant and nervous, yes, but they weren't going anywhere.

The community, as Donna now vaguely remembered from the emotionally distracting journey there, was a sprawling collection of buildings going halfway up a particularly large hill. Only not all of them were exactly buildings. All were made from dirt, and many sported roofs covered in long violet grass—more dug out of the hill than built into it.

It looked like a fascinating little assembly and Donna would have been glad to be exploring it rather than worrying about this, but here she was, running after the Doctor like she did far too often.

She didn't know whether he had asked the creature while speaking to it, or that conversation had somehow given him a stronger link to the cave-dwellers as a whole, or any of the Upper Cirulians had given him directions and she'd missed it, but each footstep he took seemed amazingly sure, and inside twenty minutes of moving through the hills averaging at a jogging pace, he had slowed to a walk and was looking around carefully, face full of focus—on what, she didn't know.

The crowd of Upper Cirulians trailing after them had doubled in size after they'd left the building, and they were not being shy about asking questions, but the Doctor genuinely did not seem to be hearing them. Donna answered the ones she caught as best she could, but she was admittedly not as well-informed as she'd have liked.

Finally, the madman seemed to come out of his own mind, stopped dead, and spun around, expression dead serious. Donna and the Upper Cirulians stopped as well, almost as a single unit, joined in mutual confusion and readiness to hear what on Earth—Cirula, rather—was going on, despite the group of natives easily standing several metres behind Donna.

"Hello inhabitants of Cirula," he began, and though his grave expression remained, he seemed to almost immediately become distracted as he continued, "speakers of Raxian, Hill-dwellers, people of the purple mountains. We are standing almost directly above a rather dense population of what you generically call lauep. Don't panic, because this is why you're here."

Immediately they were looking down, taking involuntary steps back, grasping each other's arms in search of support, murmuring and exclaiming in alarm. Donna chewed on her lower lip as she watched, praying for this to end well, not sure how good the chances were that it would.

"For those of you who may not be completely aware what the fuss is about, Donna and I—ah yes, I'm the Doctor by the way, and this is Donna, hello," and he gestured to her and waved accordingly, while she rolled her eyes. "We were in those caves a matter of hours ago. Not sure how many hours, but less than a day. Not sure how long a day is here though." He scratched his head.

"It's been almost twelve hours," Donna supplied.

"There we go! Twelve hours. And I came out with this," and he grasped the fabric of his trousers and showcased his ankle more dramatically than Donna had been aware was possible. The entire crowd stepped forward to see a bit better, and most of them appeared fascinated and horrified but not shocked, while a few were obviously receiving new information.

"Yes, it took my senses. All of them in fact. But you know what? It gave them back. And at this very second," he shouted suddenly, dropping the leg of his trousers, "this _fantastic_ creature is communicating with the ones below me."

As he continued, the Upper Cirulians visibly became increasingly disturbed and even frightened. "You are in no danger at all, I assure you," the Doctor said urgently, holding both his arms up, palms facing outwards. "And I am going to prove that to you. Donna, you might want to step back a bit."

She blinked. She had been purposefully standing near him to show the natives that she wasn't afraid. They were still giving the two of them a wide berth, but she didn't see why she had to join them in that regard. And so she stayed stubbornly in place, crossing her arms for good measure. "Why?"

"Give it a few seconds, and then I urge you to follow me," the Doctor called, again addressing the small crowd of onlookers. "Of course nobody's forcing you to, but—and I am more than serious when I say this—if you don't, this was all for nothing."

The ground beneath Donna's feet rumbled gently, and involuntarily she staggered back.

Meanwhile, the long grass around the Doctor's legs suddenly fell towards him, and, like he was standing in a jerky lift, his entire body traveled straight down about six inches. He swayed dangerously in place, but his feet were underground by now, and before Donna could register what was happening, in a mighty reverberation accompanied by the alarmed shouting of the Upper Cirulians, the hill swallowed him up.


	12. Chapter 12

_Guys, this chapter, the last one, and the upcoming one were supposed to be all one chapter in my original outline. Am I cramming in unnecessary details? Or has this story just developed a mind of its own?_

* * *

Donna leaped back in shock, all coherent thoughts flying straight out of her head. The Upper Cirulians had immediately launched into a crescendo of bewildered and fearful chattering, and the ground underneath them all was quaking.

He was gone. There wasn't even a visible hole among the long grass. It had taken less than a second, and there was no trace of him; he'd as good as vanished.

The reality of the minor quake happening beneath her didn't even register with Donna until the spot where the Doctor had been eaten up by the dirt began to collapse in on itself. And finally she processed what was happening: the structural integrity of the ground was being intentionally and systematically compromised. Of course, her thoughts would have been more accurately translated into words as _Cave things making ground fall_ , as most of her brain at the moment was dedicating itself to getting her far enough away to be safe.

The dirt tumbled downward, reshaping itself until it found enough empty space to fall through the darkness and create what appeared to be a… a path. A gradually descending ramp, stretching towards the now-panicked crowd of Upper Cirulians, leading to God knew where. It wasn't finished yet. It was still being made, as the rumbling became further and further removed, descending ever nearer to the caves beneath their feet.

Donna somehow ended up with the Upper Cirulians. She genuinely didn't remember the path she'd taken to reach them. All she could do was watch the natural destruction unfolding, and all she could think was _He's down there_.

The path before them was about two metres wide and many times that in length, even before it vanished into utter darkness. The thick layer of soft brown soil from which sprouted gave way to gritty, rock-filled dirt, and a coat long purple grass covered the ramp, only beginning to thin soon before the ramp morphed into a tunnel and sight was no longer a factor.

They all stared down, fully aware of what the Doctor had intended— _still_ intended—for them to do. And every single one of their instincts, human and Cirulian alike, was screaming to ignore him and run for the hills.

"Doctor?" Donna called uncertainly, voice cracking slightly.

A faint echo of her own voice bouncing around the void before them was her only reply.

For a single, insane moment, Donna contemplated turning around and walking away.

And she did turn around. But she stayed planted firmly in place, and, facing the confused natives, even now slowly backing away, she said authoritatively, "All right, how many of you lot are comin' with me?"

Many of them whispered to each other. Most of the rest just blinked at her. All of them stared.

"He's gone," came a voice from the back.

"Yeah, I can see that. He asked us to follow him. You've been doing that up till this point; you really gonna stop now?"

"This is insane," a Cirulian nearly her same height at the front of the crowd said scornfully. "Walking aboveground into the Hills of Heiut is one thing, but going down into _that?_ With those things?"

"I've done it once already today," she said, looking at him evenly. "So has the Doctor. This is his second time, and he already lost all his senses to 'those things.' Got 'em back too! With nothing but the power of persuasion. He could have saved himself and left you lot to rot, but he didn't." She couldn't know this for a fact, but she was sure that it was true. "He's a bloody miracle worker, he is. And he's a madman. And he's the kindest man I've ever met. He's doing this just to save you from ' _those things_ ,' don't you see? He needs you to meet him halfway, just to come down there to see the things firsthand; he's promised your safety, put himself on the line for you. Haven't you lived like this long enough? Aren't you ready to see what you've been so afraid of?"

They still weren't fully convinced. Donna was not surprised; it would probably be unreasonable to expect as much. But she was just about done standing here when he was down there, waiting for them, waiting for _her_ —and she was silently terrified that he was not nearly as safe as he'd given the appearance of believing.

"Right," she declared, and raised her hand. "One more time: Who's comin' with me?"

* * *

The mob mentality was truly pathetic, Donna thought as she made her way through the darkness, mostly by touch, and tried to imagine what this must be like with the knowledge that everyone around her could see clear as day.

Three Cirulians had stepped forward surprisingly willingly. Three. And that alone seemed to convert almost half of them. She'd done a quick headcount and concluded that a little over twenty were coming down with her, about that many were staying at the surface, and half a dozen had gone back to the community—hopefully to bring more witnesses to whatever insanity the Doctor was engaging in down here.

The muscles in her arm had stopped seizing up before every attempt to feel for the next section of wall, but she was still not enjoying the awareness of her inability to detect _anything_ about what they were getting themselves into. Once they found wherever it was they were going, how were they supposed to know?

She was trying to have more faith in the Doctor, but her survival instincts were too insistent that this whole thing was madness, and with every tentative step she took she expected to trip over a skinny, prone form.

"This man," came a small voice from right behind her, snapping her out of her thoughts, "the Doctor. How do you know him?"

She blinked, surprised at the question. "He's my best friend," she said after a moment. And after another, she thought it beneficial to add, "And he saved my life at least once before I even could tolerate him."

"You've come a very long way to get here, haven't you?"

"Well, not here specifically," she said, and almost tripped over a sudden short drop. The tunnel was quickly becoming less even. "But yeah. We've been all over."

There was a pause before the next question, which spoke to Donna a fear of hearing the answer. But, "Have… Have you ever seen anything like this before?"

For a long moment, she was silent. And, speaking perfectly honestly, she replied, "I haven't. But the Doctor? He's seen a little bit of everything. If there's anyone this side of the Milky Way who can help you, it's him."

"Milky Way?" the voice asked vaguely, but Donna wasn't paying attention anymore. She was pretty sure she could make out shapes in the distance. Shapes of what, she couldn't be sure. Probably rocks. Hopefully rocks. But there was definitely some light source somewhere. How deep were they? Where was it coming from?

She didn't realize she'd stopped in her tracks until the same voice from before asked, "Is there something wrong?"

The questioning murmurs of the Upper Cirulians behind her finally registered with her. "I think… I think we're almost there," she said haltingly, and quickly followed up with the disclaimer, "Maybe." Even she doubted the words. How long could they have been moving? Ten minutes? Twenty tops. And so painstakingly slowly too. "Stay close."

One minute of slow progress later, during which the light became evident enough that most of her companions had remarked on it, they rounded a corner. And suddenly the caverns opened up before them.

The roof of the cave had to be fifty metres up, if not more. For an instant Donna was alarmed and bewildered, knowing there had been no particularly sharp incline during their short journey, but quickly reminded herself that this was a world of hills and mountains. The one they were currently inside must have been almost completely hollow. Near the top was a long but narrow opening that offered the blessed sunlight by which they could now see.

And what they saw scared them all to pieces.

The walls of the cavern, which could easily house a fifteen-story office building, were absolutely covered with creatures that vaguely resembled grey lizards that measured, on average, three feet from tail to horned nose. Their long, sharp teeth glinted in the dim light of the sun, and their small, beady eyes—hundreds upon hundreds of sets of them, looking from all directions—were all trained on the group of Upper Cirulians led by the woman from Earth.

Many of said Cirulians screamed. Donna vaguely heard the solid thump of a body hitting the ground as one apparently fainted. None of the lizards reacted noticeably. Not that Donna was paying much attention to them.

Standing in the center of the cavern was a lone figure. His brown trench coat lay on the cave floor to his left, and his suit jacket to his right. His sleeves were rolled up past his elbows, and his arms, hanging limp at his sides, were sporting a total of seven dark spots—which weren't getting any more detailed with this amount of light and the distance of several metres between them, but Donna could certainly hazard a guess as to what they were.

It might not have even worried her that much, given his confidence and what they had learned about these creatures. Except that, despite his upright position, his head fell back, his posture was slumped, his mouth hung open, and his eyes were shut.

When she shouted his name across the cavern, forgetting completely about the hundreds of potentially hostile eyes watching from all around them, they didn't open.


	13. Chapter 13

_It's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry for the delay; had a ton of trouble getting the ball rolling with this one. I'll try to be better in the future, but no promises._

* * *

" _Doctor!_ "

She'd produced the same shout far too many times in her life. Most of the time, even when she'd thought he wasn't there, he came. He answered. He was right in front of her, and he wasn't answering now.

She was itching to run to him, but held back, for a few reasons. The most obvious was the unevenness of the cave floor. Moving around down here was dangerous, and even though the advantage of sight had been returned to her, she'd have to think carefully before doing anything and move with deliberation. But not only that—when she gave herself two seconds to think about it… the Doctor had known the risks before he'd come down here. He'd done it anyway, and invited a whole slew of people to follow. Whatever had led him to this particular situation, he'd done it of his own accord. There was no signs of struggle; the two layers he'd discarded were placed carefully and deliberately on the ground. This was all part of the plan.

Of course Donna would have _loved_ to get the details of that plan ahead of time, but even the Doctor himself was not accustomed to such a luxury.

Tentatively, she took one step forward, testing the ground beneath her before putting her full weight down. She stood there for several seconds, afraid to move, listening for any noise apart from the labored breathing of her Upper Cirulian companions. But the lizards surrounding them like dedicated sentinels never made a sound.

After a second careful step, though, a sound did come to her, but it wasn't from above. She looked up sharply.

The Doctor was stumbling—a marked improvement from his former complete stillness. His trainers squeaked softly against the stone, and after he found his footing, he looked up, and quickly his eyes locked on her. "Donna!" he cried, a smile spreading over his face.

"Doctor," she exclaimed, and took an unthinking step forward which led to her almost falling on her head. Fortunately she managed to right herself, and by the time she looked up again the Doctor had nearly closed the distance between them.

She started forward as well, and once he was close enough she grabbed him and pulled him into a hug. "You utter madman," she said into his shoulder, "do not _ever_ do that to me again."

"Oh, but where's the fun in that?" he responded, and after allowing the embrace a decent amount of time he pulled away and held her at arm's length, looking behind her. "Donna, you brought down more of them than I dared to hope!"

Her focus was suddenly drawn back to his arms, and she was able to see those dark things up close now… They were, of course, exactly what she'd already known them to be, but that didn't make them any less disgusting now. They were all pulsating slightly as they… fed? No, they couldn't be feeding, that made no sense… The Doctor'd said that only one needed to collect senses, and why would he let them on him to do so willingly?

"And, ah… while I was doing that, what've you been doing?" she asked, nervous.

"Very good question. I," and he sidestepped so as to fully enter the view of the frightened Cirulians, who appeared to have started crowding back, though none seemed to have actually turned around and departed, "have been discussing things with the gatherers."

"What kind of things?" Donna asked, brows knit together.

"Mainly how best to demonstrate their good intentions to their aboveground neighbors," the Doctor replied candidly. "When they brought me down here, I invited all gatherers present to come communicate with me. They could, and still can, sap my senses at any point." He threw his arms wide. "But have they?"

The Upper Cirulians blinked at him. He waited. Donna saw where this was going.

"No," she said, suppressing a good-natured sigh at his need for theatricality.

The Doctor grinned. "Indeed not, Donna. Proving that I _can_ trust them. Let me tell you, I am in an extremely vulnerable state right now." He held up his forearms. "At any moment I could be rendered completely helpless, unable to take in the world around me in any capacity. The potential is there, but my senses are intact. What does this mean?"

Several seconds of silence passed, wherein Donna very suddenly noticed a bead of sweat escape the Doctor's hairline and begin to travel down the side of his face. His fists were clenched, and the forearms he was displaying so prominently were trembling slightly. The Doctor was not quite as comfortable with this vulnerability as he probably appeared from a few yards away, as the Upper Cirulians currently stood. She dearly hoped it was merely a survival instinct he couldn't fight, rather than anything based in logic.

Finally, "They're intelligent," came a soft voice from the middle of the crowd. Donna raised an eyebrow. He'd actually gotten a response out of them.

" _Exactly_ ," he cried. "There, already you've learned more about these creatures than you ever did in the years you've lived as a part of your terrified community. Now, these things on my arms are all the sense-gatherers of the colony you see around you. These creatures," and he waved a parasite-covered arm in a gesture that encompassed the lizard-covered walls of the cavern, "are the most abundant members of the colony. Most of them have the job of gathering food—all members of the colony are omnivores, if you were curious, and eat a lot of fungi and cave fish—and a smaller portion, about twenty percent, are guards. And what are they guards of?"

He took off again across the cave floor, and Donna was left wondering how he could possibly be moving so fast without tripping. Either Time Lords were even nimbler than she'd previously believed, or the things on his arms— _and ankle_ , she suddenly remembered—were helping him out. Somehow.

He skidded to a halt at one of the darker corners of the cave, and knelt down, his back to his audience. Donna was puzzled when he didn't rise again immediately, or move, or make a sound. His head was down, and she could see the concentration in his tense shoulders.

"What's he doing?" whispered one of the Cirulians behind her.

"I think… he's talking to them," she responded, realizing it the same moment the words left her mouth.

It was at least a full sixty seconds before he stood up again, and Donna breathed out a silent sigh of relief. She wasn't sure she'd be able to take many more instances of being afraid he'd gone unresponsive again; if she kept reacting with this level of fear, her heart might actually give out before they got off this bloody planet.

Behind the Doctor, splitting into two lines that curved around either side of him, emerged a great number of the same type of creatures that were still staring down the visitors from aboveground. The large grey lizards just kept coming, gathering in an unorganized mass on all sides of the Doctor. When they stopped, their numbers had reached at least two dozen.

And after a long pause, there was yet more movement behind him. Donna craned her neck, expecting more lizards, but no—whatever was coming was bigger.

Soon began to emerge vaguely humanoid creatures, maybe three feet tall—about the size of human children. They were, however, riding on the backs of more of the lizards, flopping about rather uselessly on top of them. Their skin was pale grey, and stretched snugly over their disproportionately large heads. Their eyes were clearly enormous, but currently hidden under their lids. Their hands each bore six long, slender fingers, and Donna glimpsed a thin tail on each of them.

Their steeds didn't come very far from the cave walls, but they put a decent amount of space between themselves and the Doctor. There were five of them in total.

The Doctor displayed his forearms yet again, mouth curving slightly upwards in a dry smile. "I can feel them tensing," he said. "They're prepared. If I make a single threatening move, I will never see or feel or hear again." He gestured widely to the lizards surrounding him and the newcomers. "And I'm _certain_ that, that failing, these beauties—the guards, if you didn't guess—will not hesitate to rip me to shreds."

Donna stared at the creatures hanging from the cave wall not one metre above his head. Their teeth were bared, sharp and yellow and huge. Her heart skipped a few beats.

"There's a reason they protect these creatures so viciously," the Doctor continued, gesturing slowly and nonthreateningly downward towards the child-sized ones. Donna recalled his explanation to Ilseg before—Ilseg. She wondered what he was doing at the moment, whether he knew that so many of his people had come down here. He probably wasn't very happy.

"They are the dreamers, the thinkers, the workers. They're smart, maybe even smarter than you." The Doctor was staring down at them, obviously in awe himself. "What's the only prerogative of most species you've seen? Survival. Nothing more. Right?"

The Upper Cirulians were silent. Donna snuck a glance back at them, and saw a wide variety of emotions—wonder, fear, nervousness, disgust, curiosity.

"Well, these creatures are significantly more complex than that. They see the world as more than a collection of tools and circumstances they can use to get through another day—it's more like a canvas. They're artists, craftsmen, call them what you will—but they need to add to the world like they need to eat and drink. It's their function—it's what keeps them going.

"And that, regrettably," he continued, finally looking up at the group behind Donna, the ones he'd been addressing this whole time, "is where you come in. The gatherers" —and he held up his arms once more— "are sent out to patrol the caves for new senses when it becomes known that the next generation of workers is coming. They are born with only one, one that you yourselves have not. The gatherers must supply them with five more before they can adequately take in the world. Sometimes the search takes years. But when the workers are finally gifted with the ability to see, to hear, to _feel_ … they can use those dreams they've been saving up since they were old enough to think, and start building.

"So you see, these creatures," and he hadn't actually lowered his arms since the last time he'd displayed them, but now he held them up even higher, "these _lauep_ , that you've been so afraid of for so long—they're only the tip of the iceberg. I know they have hurt you, but there's so much more to them than you realize…"

Donna's attention, along with that of most of the Upper Cirulians listening with her, was abruptly snapped away from the Doctor's words as a sudden din rose not far into the tunnel behind them. Shouts, and the sound of many heavy footfalls, and the clack of metal against stone.

She whipped around. The Doctor seemed to have just realized that something was wrong. She called, "Doctor," more out of instinct than anything else. There was a question in the word. Worry. Camaraderie. A shared understanding.

His arms came quickly down, and the huge lizards surrounding him immediately took a warning step in his direction, but they were obviously aware that their greater concern lay across the cavern from them. The few riders among them, however, did not appear particularly concerned.

Donna turned back to see the crowd of Cirulians parting like the Red Sea to let in the new arrivals—a group with no visible end, all wielding weapons, the most common seeming to be one that resembled a primitive sword with a wicked barb at the end of its long hilt.

However, it was also noteworthy that many of them came in moaning, holding their heads, even falling and dropping their weapons. Their eyes seemed unfocused. Their words were incoherent. And their steps appeared unguided by any sensory input. They were soldiers entering war blind—blind and worse. And at their forefront, carrying two extra daggers strapped to his belt, Donna recognized Ilseg.

He was moaning and groaning just as much as the rest of them, clutching his head tightly between his hands, eyes screwed shut. Even after he fell, practically at her feet, his feet worked furiously to move him forward, as if they weren't aware they were not in an opportune position to walk.

Donna stared down at him, just one among the throbbing mass of confused Cirulians, and felt something growing in her mind that she did not want.

The last thing that reached her ears before they were filled with so many sounds she felt her head might split from the cacophony was the Doctor screaming.


	14. Chapter 14

_So I don't want to be one of those people who require a certain number of reviews before each update, but just note that reviews definitely_ do _encourage me to update. :) To be honest I'm kind of sad there was only one review for the last chapter… I was really curious what you guys would think was happening. (Thanks for the constant support, Pro-LifeCatholic. You da bomb. :) I mean, you still could formulate some thoughts before reading this one, if you feel so inclined, but I'll of course completely understand if you don't._

 _Well enough of that. There's not as much content or explanation in this chapter as I'd hoped, but once again it got longer than I expected (this is the longest one so far, in fact), and as it's been a while, I wanted to give you guys something. It's not what I planned, but I'm happy with it._

 _We're nearing the end—I'm thinking no more than four more chapters after this one, but definitely at least two. Hope you have enjoyed the ride, and continue to do so._

 _And since this will likely be the last update of 2015… I wish you all a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year! In any event, regardless of your creed or customs, I hope you enjoy the next few weeks._

* * *

Nothing made sense. There was too much happening at once for any of it to connect in a discernably logical manner. She was seeing a million sights, hearing a million sounds, smelling a million smells. Her skin was being pulled and prodded and caressed and rubbed and poked in every possible area, and her mouth was filled with the taste of every food she'd ever eaten, and so many she never had.

Time had lost meaning—this could have been going on for a few seconds or a few hours and she wouldn't know—when it all started to drift apart. It wasn't that any of it was becoming any less vivid; more like it was being… spaced out, giving her the choice to focus on different parts of it while the rest raged in the background. She didn't know how it happened—it certainly wasn't her doing, unless her mind had just adapted to this madness on its own—but she was grateful.

Most of the sights she was seeing were fairly dark, but some hint of brightness in the shadows drew her in its direction—not that anything spatial was really going on, but it was the best description available to her right now. She saw hands stretched out before her, but they were not her own. They were deathly pale, resembling human hands but much smaller, with thick skin and longer fingers in proportion to the entire hands.

The hands came to a rest on a tiny patch of sunlit stone, and she felt its smoothness and its warmth. She hadn't a bloody clue how, but there it was—the sensation was unmistakable. She felt a tingle spread across her skin, a thrill of excitement physically manifesting itself.

Somewhere far off, another sensation practically exploded, successfully winning over her attention. She was there in an instant, and she felt her entire body shake. She tumbled to the floor, but the quaking around her did not stop. Innumerable particles of dust danced in the thin shafts of light that fell into the cave. Sharp pain stabbed through her arm as she was thrown to the side and into something hard, and all around her mighty rumbles reverberated through the earth. Or… the Cirula. An enormous _crash_ split the air, and she unconsciously reached up to her ear to test for blood.

Panic shot through her, but the sensations faded as she pulled away from them. Somewhere after that she caught glimpses of hands pointing this way and that before her, though not the same hands as before… scores of those huge lizards moving about and pushing stones like a well-oiled machine… rocks being cleared out from the higher areas of the cave…

She saw a small form scurry in through the sliver of light far away from her, and she saw a larger, darker form immediately beset it. She felt a rough tongue that was not hers lick chapped lips that were not hers. She watched orange tongues of flame flare up before her, red meat roast on the spit. She felt the savory sweetness of an especially nourishing meal, and she watched the construction of a series of traps just underneath the surface, through which many more such meals were delivered.

She felt another pair of alien hands test the smooth stone before her, measuring it with the naked eye in as many ways as possible. Something jagged broke the tough skin of her palm, and warm liquid oozed out, but, slowly but surely, the small shards she held were gradually formed into the perfect tools. A definable shape began to emerge from the large rock she had chosen as time passed, and she felt a twinge of pride, knowing that what had been nothing special before now held new beauty and new meaning thanks to her labors.

An almost constant presence was the lizards they'd seen coating the cave walls—the guards. It made sense. They were ever vigilant, at least one or two of them somewhere within speaking distance at all times. She learned that they blinked once a minute on average, their skin was far smoother than it appeared, and they were probably only a little smarter than the average dog, but far stronger. Initially, they had had nowhere comfortable to sleep, no reliable way to make sure they had enough food for themselves, especially in the harsher seasons. Building shelters for them out of stone and smoothing out the floor was backbreaking work on its own, not to mention setting up ways to traverse the caves more safely and quickly so as to collect more food—the invention of the wheel had been a great help there—but their loyal guards and companions deserved to live more comfortably.

At one time, she watched from the shadows as an Upper Cirulian stumbled into the cavern—not the one to which the Doctor had led them; this was somewhere else. She recognized the species, of course, but at the same time felt her eyebrows knit together in an indication that she'd never seen its kind before. All guards in the vicinity were stationed in plain view, ready and watching. The figure veered far to the side, and finally crashed into the ground.

She felt her feet beat against the stone, carrying her forward to the fallen creature. Immediately three lizards were upon her, urging her back, but she saw the still body—not lifeless, but helpless. She saw the rise and fall of its chest, the panic in its sightless eyes, and she saw the creature she felt some connection to but that she, as Donna, did not understand… suckling at the still form's ankle.

Hot tears rolled down her cheeks.

It was all happening at the same time; all these little scenes she managed to glimpse were spread over a period of who knew how many years. She couldn't keep track of all of it, or she knew she'd go mad, but somehow, its bits and pieces remained clear, standing comprehensibly on their own. She saw throngs of her brethren and the glint of bared teeth and—very rarely—the white light of the Cirulian sun. She smelled fresh dirt, smoke and ash, scores of plant species, fear, petrichor, decay—some things intoxicating and undefinable and some things she could have gone without. She tasted mushrooms and spicy meat and fresh water and salty tears and blood on her tongue. She felt her bones crack and water drip on her head and the warmth of a thousand separate embraces. At times she even felt some physical manifestation of the utter frustration of _needing_ something, but being unable to get at it, or even pinpoint where it might be.

She witnessed lives, hundreds or maybe even thousands of very real lives playing out before her—and as she came to this realization, it became almost overwhelming. She was certain that she was currently experiencing the worst agony, the greatest comfort, and everything in between of every single craftsman that had ever graced the caves of Cirula.

And then, all at once, it stopped.

At first she floated in nothing but blackness. She saw nothing, she heard nothing. Everything she had just experienced echoed in her every sense, but there was no longer any real input. It was all just… echoes. And then it was oblivion.

But not oblivion.

Donna couldn't explain it. A thousand whispers she couldn't hear tugged at the edges of her mind, decidedly there but indiscernible, overlapping and growing and changing and all coming out to white noise. She didn't know through what lens she was perceiving them; she just knew they were there. It was the only thing she could say definitively about them, and as time passed, her frustration at that grew.

As if in a direct response to her lack of comprehension, the near-oblivion ended as sensation returned—but this time, it wasn't borrowed. The soundless whispers faded as actual voices came to her, the low murmurings of many dozens of Cirulians all around her. Feet slid across stone, small _thumps_ sounded when some of them tripped.

She sat up as quickly as she could manage—not very, given the fact that the nerve endings all across her body were still in the process of returning from vacation. Slowly the voices around her faded into intelligible words. One voice was particularly close, and she turned around to see the young face of the Cirulian with whom she had briefly spoken on the way down here. Her thin lips were moving. Donna stared blankly for a moment, and suddenly the words snapped through the processing center of her brain: "Are you all right?"

"Yes," Donna said, in the unthinking way one responds to a question when that question is the first thing they hear on beginning to struggle to consciousness in the morning. She continued glancing around the cavern, trying to remember what she was forgetting. Her eyes fell on Ilseg. He was sitting with his legs crossed and his head in his hands, but he seemed to have regained composure. He was no longer moaning, and his movements were small. But he appeared decidedly… bothered. She was currently a little too mentally distracted to find an appropriately strong synonym.

She tried to rub her arms in the cold air of the caverns, and the motion was awkward at first as she had to remind herself how to move. "You felt it too?" the young Cirulian asked quietly.

"Yeah," Donna said, her own voice barely any louder. "And, ya know, saw it, heard it… et cetera."

"What _was_ it?"

Donna just stared at the inquisitive and confused face before her, trying to formulate a reasonable response. And suddenly, across the cavern, the tiny whimpers that really mattered finally registered with her, and the conversation became inconsequential.

She started out crawling, and very nearly came right on top of a lizard weaving among the crowd. It hissed, eyes blinking one after the other, and Donna yelped and fell backwards. After regarding her for a moment, it continued on its way, and after glancing around and very hurriedly noting that it was not the only one of its kind patrolling the cavern among the scores of Upper Cirulians fumbling around the darkness, she continued on hers.

Almost immediately she very nearly cut her palm open on a discarded weapon lying on the cave floor. She picked it up by its hilt and jammed the tip of the blade downward, using it as a crutch to push herself to her feet. Once she was up, and reasonably sure she could stand on her own, she slid it across the floor in the direction of a dark spot near the cave wall. With luck, it would find an ancient sinkhole and fall several stories down.

From her new vantage point, the job of locating the single different member of the crowd was made a hundred times easier. She tripped twice on her way over to him, once almost falling flat on her face, but movement was imperative; she had to get reaccustomed to it as quickly as the situation allowed.

He was curled on the cave floor, knees tucked into his chest, one hand covering the back of his head, the other grasping at nothing on the stony floor. His muscles were taut, his arms still sporting seven dark spots—and, as she could see due to the state of his trousers after all the recent movement he'd done—the original on his ankle was still hanging on as well. She could not see his face, and he'd gone quiet since she'd first heard him, but his shoulders were shaking.

"Doctor," she said without thinking, and took a seat next to him, taking hold under his arms—being careful, of course, not to brush against any of those things—best to be on the safe side—and lifting his upper body off the ground. He was slightly stiff, but he didn't resist. Though she'd half-expected to see tears based on the sounds he'd been making, there were none—thank heavens. What she did see was a great knot between his eyebrows, and his lips forming words she couldn't understand.

She stared at him, one hundred percent clueless as to how to proceed. All she really needed to do was make sure he'd be all right, but… how? She couldn't even be sure what was happening to him. Had those things gone back on their word? Were they doing this to him? Were they…

Her thought process slowed. The same phenomenon had been forced onto every Upper Cirulian and the only human in the cavern. Why should the only Time Lord be exempt?

Donna took one arm out from under his to reach for his trench coat, which lay nearby. She had to drag him a couple of inches and strain quite a lot, and once she actually got to it, it took about three tries before she found the right pocket, but in less than a minute she managed to get hold of his screwdriver.

She clutched it tightly, looking down at him. On reflection, she elected to pull the entire coat nearer to them and lay his body down flat, resting his head on the bundle of fabric. She crouched over him, taking a deep breath.

All at the same time, she began shaking his shoulder with one hand, waving the light of the screwdriver less than an inch away from his closed eyelids, and shouting his name on repeat.

The result was almost instantaneous. With a shout that rivaled her own, only his didn't form any word in particular, he sat bolt upright, and would have clocked her in the head if she hadn't been prepared enough to fall backwards at the first sign of movement. His eyes were wide, but it wasn't just that—his pupils were dilated so much the black in his eyes nearly overtook the brown. He drew in quick, gasping breaths, and one of his hands slipped almost immediately, resulting in him banging an elbow against the stone.

Donna had her hands out the whole time, feeling like she ought to be ready to… contain him, somehow, because he looked like he was about to explode. "Doctor," she said sharply, and that seemed to do the trick; he turned towards her, and, after four or five slow blinks and the obvious, deliberate process of slowing down his breathing, he said, both in response and recognition, "Donna."

She almost felt the urge to hug him again. Instead, she punched him solidly in the shoulder and said sternly, "Last time. That is the _last_ time you get to do that to me today, you understand me?"

His breathing was still a little shallow, but as he clutched his arm, a smile curved the corner of his mouth, and he nodded.


	15. Chapter 15

_First off, sorry if I made any of you feel guilty with the thing about reviews in the last AN. It was just kind of bad luck, I guess, since the chapter on which I was most looking forward to feedback just happened to be one that didn't get much. Not a big deal, and nobody's fault, and don't you dare feel the need to apologize._ :)

 _Second thing: I just recently discovered the existence of review replies, so I will likely be utilizing that feature in the future. Many of you have made legitimate points that I should like to address directly, especially with these last few chapters, so that's handy. Very hopefully this one will clarify some things. Also, longest chapter so far! (Second time in a row I've said that.) Do enjoy._

* * *

The Doctor's breathing was normalizing, and while he seemed to still be working through… whatever had just happened, he was decidedly calmer after the initial shock of coming out of it. Donna gave him about half a minute before she started asking questions, and her first one was, "You felt it too?"

He tossed one hand up in a gesture akin to a shrug. "Well, 'felt' covers just a fraction of it."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You all right?"

"Of course." He breathed out particularly deeply and deliberately, not for the first time. "Are you?"

"Yeah." She wasn't sure she quite believed him. She never could be, especially with that question. But he did seem to be "all right"—or something close to it, anyway. "Do you know what it was?"

He rubbed one hand down the side of his face, and as he did she went through a quick mental check of his symptoms. His skin was a normal shade, his hands were steady, his breathing was about under control, and his voice was regularly modulated—he was calm. On the other hand, he wasn't making much eye contact, he was speaking very quietly, and his movements were very sluggish. Whatever he had just gone through—because it couldn't have been just like what she had—it had taken a great deal out of him.

"Their trump card," he answered. "A demonstration—their best and simplest argument."

"They showed us their history?" she ventured, dubious but completely blanking on an alternative.

He grinned. "The craftsmen did, yes. They're… magnificent."

"But this lot—they haven't any senses. It wasn't their personal history. They couldn't have done all those things."

"No. But they've been inside the minds of those who could, who did."

She blinked. He started to continue, but she cut him off, working through it out loud. "They… The present craftsmen?"

He nodded.

"Showed us the past. But then that bit at the end, with nothing… the darkness. Was that…?"

Something in his face changed, and he said, particularly quiet, " _That_ wasn't so much the past."

Donna breathed out, feeling a sort of tentative peace come over her as her suspicions were confirmed. In the pause, she realized that her surroundings were markedly quieter than they had been mere minutes before, and ventured a look around.

Unsurprisingly, most of the Upper Cirulians were watching them, with the majority of the movement in the crowd coming from the large lizards, still doing rounds. Most Upper Cirulians were speaking in hushed tones amongst themselves, while others were completely silent—but nobody looked quite like what Donna would call afraid. This was good.

The ones who weren't looking at her and the Doctor, however, were looking up and around. Involuntarily, she followed their lead.

The walls, previously obscured by hundreds of reptilian bodies, were now bare, and a small gasp found its way out of Donna as she stared up at them. They were riddled with the craftsmanship of decades of careful hands, sporting unnatural features of all varieties and functions. Most prominent was a system of ducts, originating at the area hundreds of feet above them where light found its way in—as would water during storms, Donna quickly realized. The ducts were carved into the cave wall and traveled gradually down and over, and Donna followed them with her eyes all the way until their final termination in a large and currently empty pool in the corner of the cavern. She couldn't make out all of its finer features, but she did know to look for a series of small holes in the lowest duct, above part of the pool and a small ramp carved from a boulder. She vaguely recalled seeing lizards and craftsmen alike climbing to the top of that ramp and drinking freely from the streams provided by the holes in times of heavy rain.

Countless sculptures such as the ones she'd experienced building were carved into the walls as well, and she didn't understand what a lot of them were. But many were quite clearly the same species as the grey, child-sized humanoids they had seen riding the lizards, and many were of said lizards. There were even a few of Upper Cirulians. Not all carvings were of the same style or scale, and some were cruder than others, but they came together in a way that made the cavern feel more like a museum than a simple underground dwelling.

The flattest surfaces of the walls also bore paintings—again, some better than others, but all were clearly the result of days of collecting materials to make paints and brushes, and lovingly plotting every single brushstroke. Even the simplest was far more beautiful than anything Donna could produce. The subjects of the paintings were more varying than those of the sculptures, and Donna couldn't identify most of them, but, based on what information she had garnered about these creatures, she guessed that a lot could be labeled concept art of projects that, for one reason or another, had never come to full fruition.

The hushed words "Donna, it's so _beautiful_ " came to her, and she turned around. The Doctor was looking up as well, his eyes shining, his mouth stretched out in one of the hugest smiles she'd ever seen anyone produce. It was a look of such genuine awe she almost wasn't sure what she could possibly say in response.

So instead of responding, she struggled to her feet, turned to face the Upper Cirulians, and said in the most commanding voice she could muster, "So how many of you are still looking to kill the creatures whose memories you just lived through?"

It was enough. Every single one of them was silent now, just watching her. The newcomers, none of whom seemed to still be holding onto their weapons—she could read the confusion clearly in their eyes, but most of all the guilt. They very much reminded her of children being reprimanded for jumping to conclusions.

There was silence behind her as well. She turned slightly, just to check on him, and found the Doctor was still on the cave floor, staring up at her with large eyes. When they met her own, he smiled, and gave her an encouraging nod.

Already feeling far more prepared for this than she had seconds before, she turned back to the crowd. "Right, so. Part one, with all that madness happening at once—we all saw it, felt it… sensed it, right?"

A large fraction of them nodded. The rest didn't seem to be disagreeing.

"It was their memories, wasn't it?" came a voice, and it took Donna until it resumed to locate the speaker—sure enough, the young Cirulian she'd spoken to a few times already. She was looking back and forth between Donna and the Cirulian sitting right next to her, seeming shocked at her choice to speak up, as she continued, "They showed us their past. Many years of development, of work. To produce all this," and she nodded in the general direction of the creations that surrounded them.

"Exactly," Donna said quietly, smiling; and then, realizing she definitely had to give it a little bit more _oomph_ if she wanted all these creatures to hear her, "That's exactly right. They knew we were coming," and, pointedly, "they knew _all_ of us were coming."

A handful of the Cirulians dressed for war looked down in shame.

"And they let us. Welcomed us, even. So they could show us this. Their history, what they do down here. They've taken a lot from you… but now you get to see what they've been doing with it. It hasn't gone to waste. It came into worthy hands."

"What about the bit at the end? The darkness?" came another voice that had finished talking before Donna could identify who was asking the question.

"That, yes. Well… firstly, just imagine if that were it. If that were all you—we—had experienced the entire time. I would have gone _mad_. It was so close to nothing, but there was something prodding at the edges of the darkness that… well, that I don't know how to explain. But we all felt it." The faces before her registered recognition, but she saw very few nods; they were hanging on her words, waiting for an explanation. "It was maddening. Because we're used to so much more input. But the craftsmen? Little blokes we saw earlier? That's all they've ever known." The majority of the pairs of eyes locked on her were gradually widening. "They do have one sense, as I know you're aware, and I'm no expert on it, but those whispers we all felt I'm _sure_ would carry meaning if we were receiving them through the right lens. They have the capacity to think, and communicate with one another. They just can't feel, or hear, or see, or smell, or taste. This man, the Doctor"—and she stepped aside, affording them all a clear view of him, but all he did was continue to watch her intently—"he was going to be the one to change that. But he spoke to them and instead of ignoring him and just doing what they always do, they facilitated this meeting, led us to this place—they're why _any_ of us has a clue what's going on here! That is not the way of simple creatures only out for their own interests. They're creative, they're intelligent, they have profound depth that they conceal in these caves and keep to themselves because they know how dangerous it would be to reveal any of this to you. Until now. They're taking an enormous risk here. How you proceed is your choice."

She stopped, taking a deep breath and remembering why she'd always gotten low marks in her speech classes back in secondary school. She wasn't sure whether she'd covered everything that needed covering, whether the message had gotten through, whether her listeners in the back had been able to hear her.

After a few seconds of quiet, and shortly after these worries passed through her mind, a voice came from the back, hoarse and breaking, but strong: "If they're so bloody _intelligent_ , that only makes what they've done to us all the more unforgiveable."

A physical pang shot through Donna the instant she registered these words. A moment of confusion passed then, as the voice was somehow familiar, but not familiar enough to place before she followed the wave of turning faces and located the speaker.

He was on his knees, eyes locked on her, wide with anger, and blinking rapidly. Donna saw no weapons on him, and though he was admittedly rather far off to be able to distinguish this, she suspected the lizards would have taken care of most weapons while they'd all been… incapacitated. The few remaining ones she'd seen since then seemed to have disappeared to the same place.

"Ilseg," she said, holding her hands out unconsciously in a pacifying manner. "They want to negotiate."

He rose to his feet, not breaking eye contact with her, and the Upper Cirulians nearest to him automatically scooted away, giving him room to step forward. "An enemy country cannot inflict crippling disabilities on a neighboring country's citizens over countless years and then expect to make peace while continuing to do the evil they've been doing all along."

"Those involved in a war have to make difficult decisions," came a voice from behind Donna. She turned just in time to see the Doctor stumble on his way to his feet, and almost unconsciously reached for him just in time for him to grab her outstretched arms and stabilize himself.

"You okay?" she asked quietly, leaning in as he did.

"Sure," came the reply. "Feels like my feet were asleep."

She straightened up so that he could, and though she didn't detect much more danger of him crashing into the ground, leaning on her shoulder seemed something he was willing to do at the moment. "Ilseg," he said, projecting his voice again, and said Cirulian continued to approach them slowly, "here's the bottom line: they're intelligent, you've seen that firsthand, and they want to make peace. That will require some cooperation on the part of your people. I know it's hard to let go of the past; believe me, I get it. But you have to."

Ilseg was close enough now that Donna could see how much his feet were dragging with every step he took, his clenched and shaking fists. He came to a halt between them and the crowd, the majority of whom were now talking quietly amongst themselves and no longer paying undivided attention to the spectacle before them. "How could I?" Ilseg rasped, voice low, and Donna suddenly noticed one more thing that his new proximity made rather clear: the large tears trembling in his dark eyes.

He turned those eyes back and forth between the Doctor and Donna, and seemed to be genuinely looking for answers as he asked, "How could _they?_ " A tear finally escaped his eye and began to travel down his cheek, leaving an impressively wide trail. He rubbed at it unconsciously, continuing unsteadily, "I understand what you're saying. You tell me they know the toll they've taken and they want to stop. But then how… how could they have done this in the first place? How could they make the decision to do this to us, to me?"

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Donna noted with interest that no human could produce this many tears in such a short amount of time. At the forefront of her thoughts, however, was a slowly growing realization, put to words when the Doctor said next to her, voice carefully modulated but obviously sincere, "I'm sorry. Ilseg, I'm so, so sorry."

Even through his tears, the Upper Cirulian scowled. "You don't know. You don't know anything."

"I know enough," the Doctor said softly, "to recognize the signs of a father who's lost a child."

More startled by the weary note in the Doctor's tone than the deduction itself, Donna snuck a sideways glance at his face. It was an expression she'd seen before—an old pain buried deep within himself being brought very nearly to the surface but not enough to be detectable by anyone who didn't know to look, manifesting only in a dull glint in his eyes. Her mind leaped immediately to Jenny, but it went so much deeper than that.

" _Donna, I've been a father before._ "

She realized she was staring, and at the same time noticed the purposeful way the Doctor was _not_ looking at her; he'd realized too. She returned her attention to Ilseg, or at least tried to, and succeeded enough to become aware that he was speaking, his voice so soft, but breaking only on occasion.

"I tore apart the caves looking for her," he was saying, almost too quietly for Donna to hear. "And when we found her, she was on her stomach on the ground, her arms and legs flopping around weakly, fingers grasping for anything to hold on to… She used to dance. She moved with such grace. She couldn't anymore." He swallowed. "The surgery was quick, and when the doctor came out, he looked so grave I was sure he would tell me that she was effectively lost.

"As it turned out, she retained a weak grasp on her sense of touch. This was a small comfort. The creature that had taken everything else from her was incinerated before I thought to ask about it. I would have gladly taken part in its destruction, given the chance."

"Ilseg," the Doctor interjected, but his tone was mild.

The Upper Cirulian didn't look apologetic, but he continued, slowly and carefully, "She was still there, and I could still hold her and comfort her that way, and she would hug me back, but… it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. She couldn't get around on her own. She couldn't watch the sunset. Taste food. Smell the flowers in her garden. Listen to music, hear my voice, or even her own. She had a cane to help her navigate, keep her from colliding with things, but even then she could not hear warning shouts, and… and I would try to communicate to her that I didn't want her going anywhere unaccompanied, but she never quite understood, and… I could never find it in myself to deny her this modicum of independence when she could do so little else. Sometimes she'd try to dance, but she would crash into walls and fall and she broke a couple of bones this way, and she'd cry and cry for days afterwards."

Donna could see where this was going, and her nose was already prickling in anticipation.

The Doctor's weight disappeared from her shoulder as he tentatively stepped away. Her hands went out again as a precautionary measure, but he seemed to be perfectly steady on his own. "The hill," he said quietly.

Donna's mind immediately went to the only clear view she'd had of the sprawling community—and the enormous hill into whose side it was built. In some places it had appeared so steep so as to be unclimbable.

Ilseg rubbed one hand down his face angrily, and Donna noted the spots of moisture forming at his feet. Words appearing to fail him, he nodded.

The Doctor, on the other hand, was ready to spew long tirades even at his very worst moments. For a moment he said nothing, only standing still and watching Ilseg, but Donna knew it was coming. And to be fair, Ilseg's original question was still up in the air.

"What we have here," the Doctor began, "is something very evolutionarily unusual. These creatures' intelligence has expanded faster than many other aspects of their being—and with that, their consciences. The craftsmen never did the stealing, never directly hurt your community. Some of them never even knew what had to be done to supply them with the necessary tools for what they do, but most did. And for many hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, they were perfectly willing to continue doing what they did, even if it meant hurting the likes of you."

Donna herself had just about lost the ability to listen to long explanations like this anymore. She could only imagine the trouble Ilseg was having, until she took a good look at him, and realized that he was, in fact, listening intently.

"But in recent years, and especially strongly in the last few generations, they have actually come to realize that the species from whom they take these basics of life are at least almost as intelligent and emotionally complex as they are. And let me tell you, the guilt has been _killing_ them. Now, as a space traveler I can tell you that in most cases where multiple intelligent species are evolving in the same environment, their habits and abilities change with their morals. If living means doing terrible damage to another species, nature finds another way for them to live. But this lot? They've evolved intellectually too fast for their necessities of survival to keep up. They've never had senses at birth, only a colony that would find a way to supply them with senses. Now they want out. But nature is, as it sometimes does, holding them back."

When it became obvious that the Doctor was finished for now, Donna felt the need to add, "Now that he's here," and she nodded towards the Time Lord at her side, "they're taking advantage of the opportunity to try to overcome nature."

"Making themselves vulnerable," Ilseg interjected, a tiny dry smile curving his mouth through his bitter tone. "Asking for our help."

The Doctor returned with a smile of the same variety. "I believe we've said that once or twice, yes."

Ilseg ran a hand through his thick black hair, closing his eyes. Donna could read resignation in his shoulders, but his face told a different story. She returned her focus for a moment to the crowd he stood in front of; many animated conversations were obvious, but she saw about as many tears. Many Upper Cirulians were sitting still, alone in a large crowd, staring at nothing. In a great deal of those who fell into the latter category, she saw Ilseg.

His eyes were still screwed shut, and he was unconsciously playing with his long fingers. Donna noticed a few lizards not too far off, watching the three of them, obviously sensing something important was going on.

The Doctor whispered, "Given a way to ensure no one else would ever go through what you and your daughter did, would you do it?"

The Upper Cirulian's eyes opened and locked with the Doctor's. They stared at one another for several seconds. Finally, Ilseg's shoulders drooped, and he said, suddenly sounding exhausted, "We need to get everyone back to the community and tell them what we've seen."


	16. Chapter 16

_So this was a long time coming, and I feel like there's just too much that needed to happen in this and not enough time to give it detail. I did my best with balancing things; let me know how I did._

 _This is the penultimate chapter of the story. In a stunning turn of events, most of the final one—rather epilogue-ish—is already written, so you should be getting that fairly shortly, at least comparatively. It's been a fun ride, and I would like to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who ever reviewed, followed, or favorited—you really kept me going._

* * *

Donna had suspected that the Doctor would be needed to answer questions, but for the first hour the two of them were left almost completely alone as all the witnesses spread through the community, describing what they had experienced. And that was probably for the best. Donna might describe it in one way, but she didn't imagine there would be a single repeat in the combined efforts of the scores of Upper Cirulians to get their fellows to understand. There was so much to say, and even though the Doctor was probably the most qualified at the moment to provide scientific explanations, these people needed to hear about the practically firsthand sensory experience from their friends. The emotion they put behind it would start to change their minds even before they started learning the hard facts.

Wasn't that was some rhetorical device? Donna vaguely wondered. Pathos versus logos, or ethos, or something like that?

She and the Doctor were seated in what appeared to be a nice little inn. Somebody had paid for them to have a meal; Donna hadn't even been aware of this small act of charity until the perpetrator was gone, likely off somewhere being a good witness and telling somebody about what he or she had learned.

She noticed a few other patrons in the little restaurant had bowls of wotgei (though most were currently in heated conversations, their food forgotten). She wished for some herself, but she couldn't really complain about what she'd ended up with—something that vaguely reminded her of chicken pot pie, but with obviously foreign vegetables and meat. A bumpy cup, full of what she guessed was some kind of juice, had been brought out with it.

Across from her, the Doctor was making slow progress on an identical meal. His jacket and trench coat were back on, but she knew he still had those things on his arms.

The one on his ankle had been left behind. An understandable precautionary measure—if all else failed, if for some reason nobody came back, the Doctor's senses of smell and taste would be distributed among the craftsmen. And if he gave the slightest indication that he meant to do any harm, the seven left on his arms would start the process of draining the rest and doing everything within their power to take it back to the caves.

The Doctor didn't seem that bothered by it, except he obviously wasn't particularly excited about eating or drinking at the moment. She knew he had to be hungry, but the only thing this meal could do for him right now was provide him energy.

"It's a shame," he said after getting halfway through the faux pie and setting down his utensil, appearing to decide to take a break, "I bet this is delicious."

Donna nodded and shrugged at once. "It's pretty good."

After a couple seconds of silence had passed between them, she looked up at his face again and saw his eyes fixed on her, but not really seeing her. Another moment passed, and his eyes flickered slightly to meet hers, and he said, "Describe it to me."

She frowned in puzzlement. "What, the taste?"

He nodded.

She looked down at her food again. Immediately all manner of descriptive words sprang to mind—colours, textures, sizes and shapes, but little that the Doctor couldn't already perceive on his own. She looked back up to him, brows still drawn together in thought.

"Why are there so few words to describe taste?" the Doctor said softly. "About as many as smell, maybe even fewer. One might claim it's because they're not as important senses, but given the choice… would you give them up?" He rubbed one hand down the side of his face. "There's a language spoken on a planet not too far from where Gallifrey used to be that has eighteen synonyms for the word 'sweet,' each nuanced and oft-used. It's like that for every taste word, except the ones that don't even have any near-synonyms in English. The race it's spoken by are incredibly sensitive to taste—each and every one is a grade-A chef by human standards. I've tasted their most rudimentary snack, it's brilliant—no offense, but far better than anything humanity has come up with. Real artists of the taste buds, they are." For a moment he just sat there, chewing his lip. "Imagine if they were born tasteless. So much of that culture… gone. Oh sure, probably something else would fill the space, but… I can't imagine it would be anything quite as rich."

Donna leaned forward, searching his eyes, not sure if he was caught in the throes of worry, or just being his general gloomy self, or just being his general pensive self. "Oi. Doctor. They'll convince the others. This will all work out."

He met her eyes then, and a smile creased his face. And from somewhere else in the room, a voice came, following the sound of a closing door: "Donna Noble? Doctor?"

They looked over at the same time, and there stood Ilseg at the entrance to the restaurant area. He'd changed from his leather-like armor to something similar to what he'd been wearing when she first spoke with him. And based solely on his sagging shoulders, he appeared bone-weary, but sounded lively enough when he said to them both, "They've got some questions for you."

* * *

Donna sent the Doctor on ahead. She spoke to the handful of Upper Cirulians who wanted to hear about her experience, but it was fairly obvious to the majority that she was not the more knowledgeable of them. The Time Lord stood at the top of the hill into which the community was built, where he could be heard easily by the large crowd—nearly the entire community, she suspected—while she took her place at the bottom, where some questions were put to her quietly and more privately. She answered as best she could, but had to say "I dunno" about as often as she'd have expected.

This went on for no more than an hour and was tapering into an explanation of the Doctor's tentative vision of sense-donating when incredibly, wildly, and wholly unpredictably, a Cirulian raised his hand in the air and said shakily, "I volunteer."

Donna stood there blinking as murmurs and small gasps rippled through the crowd. The speaker was near the back of the crowd, and she could tell that he was old. He was seated in something very similar to a wheelchair, situated on a small near-flat section of the hill. She could only see him from behind, but she read a certain alertness in his shoulders that was impressive.

"D'you know him?" Donna immediately whispered to her nearest listeners.

Most shook their heads, but one said, "I've seen him in the care facility. I don't think he ever gets any visitors."

She furrowed her brow, and returned her attention to the scene unfolding before the crowd. She registered the Doctor's question a few seconds after it had been asked: "What's your name?"

She didn't quite catch the response, but the Doctor was moving closer, and his voice was much louder. Still, instinctively she began to make her way slowly through the crowd to find a better vantage point—not normally an easy thing in a multitude this thick, but her recognizability proved to be an advantage in this case. As she moved, she heard the Doctor respond: "Tuln. What exactly are you volunteering for, Tuln?"

The old man coughed. "Sense donations," he rasped promptly. "What else?"

The Doctor nodded. "I just wanted to be certain." He continued on his way down the hill, and the crowd was parting readily to let him pass. Donna noted that he was moving fluidly and without assistance; whatever had hit him earlier, he'd bounced back from it quite quickly, as he was wont to do. "All right, next question. Why?"

Tuln shrugged. "I look to you like I'm doing much with my senses? I don't know if they'll want my sight or smell or taste, but the others are working just fine. My days are numbered, boy. Might as well pass on what I've got left to someone who can do something useful with it."

At this point the Doctor stopped directly in front of him, surveying him up and down. Donna was sure he was noticing the same thing she was: nobody was speaking out against this with any personal reason Tuln should reconsider. The implications of this were obvious.

"Your bravery is admirable," the Doctor said quietly. "I don't doubt that you've given this offer serious thought, but it's very big, so I'm just going to explain what will happen."

Donna came to a stop right by them as he took his arm out of his coat and jacket sleeves and pulled up that of his shirt, displaying four of the creatures in question. Though many Upper Cirulians nearby had crowded in to see what was happening, as these were revealed a large portion of them stepped backwards involuntarily.

"Can you see these?" the Doctor asked, stretching out his arm in front of Tuln.

The old Cirulian squinted a bit, and nodded. "Well enough."

"One of them will detach from me and attach to you. It won't take long before sounds start to seem muted, distant. Over a period between one hour and two, they'll fade entirely, and then you'll start to go numb. It will feel very strange. And then there will be no feeling at all. That will be it. Done. Over. No going back."

Tuln squinted again, but this time it had nothing to do with sight perception. "You trying to scare me off, Doctor? Isn't this what you wanted?"

"I wasn't finished," he said quietly. "You'll be given a short amount of time to become accustomed to your new limitations, and then led down to the caves, where you will be allowed to watch as your senses are given to the craftsmen. They'll thank you, and you'll stay down there for a bit as they start to work. It will be difficult for you. You won't be able to hear the voices of your fellows or touch the works of art the craftsmen create, much less walk on your own. You'll never hear music again or have any significant degree of independence. And the senses that remain will be just as impaired as they are now. Do you understand?"

Tuln's eyes were wide, but so were Donna's, just trying to place herself into that scenario. She did not for one second see herself willing to make such a sacrifice, and Tuln was clearly wavering.

After several long seconds of silence, the Upper Cirulian raised his eyes to meet the Doctor's, and said, "Can I hear my favourite song one more time?"

* * *

It took less than an hour to assemble a small group of musicians and play some folksy-sounding music that Donna didn't much care for but that Tuln clearly profoundly enjoyed. As Donna stood watching, she glanced back in the direction of the building that the Doctor had likened to a nursing home in their brief exchange before he was taken there to talk to one of the residents, who apparently was interested in the cause in the same way Tuln was.

They were the only two in the community of over a thousand who had spoken up, but when the Doctor emerged, he told her quietly that the old Cirulian woman inside had perfectly fine senses but was deathly ill, expected to live no more than another month. She did have two children who were still alive, but she was willing to give it all.

"So at the moment, we've got two perfectly good offers for hearing," the Doctor said. "But since Algara has offered absolutely everything, the gatherers for the colony we found want her. I'm going to take Tuln to find another colony; the gatherers have described to me the layout of the caves, and have expressed that as long as their own colony is being taken care of, they will in fact provide senses to others. They'll still be psychically connected to the ones here and poised to drain me just in case," and here he grinned, "but I think they're finally starting to trust me."

"Other colonies," Donna echoed, and her limbs suddenly felt leaden. "How far?"

"Not very, and you don't have to come. In fact I want you to stay with Algara. I and a small group of volunteers will be making the journey to bring Tuln to the nearest colony; he'll be drained along the way. We're leaving ideally as soon as they're finished playing," and he nodded to the musicians, who seemed to be wrapping up. "I'm going to leave a gatherer on Algara, a few will detach from me and stay in these parts of the caves as insurance, and then we'll head off. Honestly I still worry for the safety of Algara's gatherer if one of us doesn't remain nearby. Will you do this for me?"

She met his eyes as he waited for an answer, giving her the clear option to say no. Of course she never would. She looked him up and down, noting his deep breathing, how flattened and slightly ruffled his normally carefully styled hair now appeared, the slight tremor in his hands. He was exhausted—just as much as she was, and probably would have been much more so if he were human. But when she looked into his eyes, all she could see was how bright they were.

"Of course," she said.

* * *

Algara's last wish was to see the sunset.

Donna had seen the Cirulian sun, of course, but never seen it set. When they'd first arrived here, it had been very early in the morning, and she had no idea how Cirulian seasons worked or low long the day usually was, but as luck would have it, the day was finally drawing to a close. Algara was helped to the top of the hill into which the community was built, and there she stayed with her two children, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren.

Donna waited at the bottom of the hill, talking with various friendly Upper Cirulians passing by, until the sun actually began to dip below the horizon. She vaguely recalled the Doctor mentioning on the way here that it was a significantly smaller sun than Earth's, but as Cirula was much closer to it than Earth was to its sun, it wouldn't appear that different in size. As far as what she'd seen while wandering the hills, that seemed to be accurate.

The Doctor had disappeared some time ago. The group bringing Tuln into the caves had consisted of the Doctor and five Upper Cirulians apart from Tuln, Ilseg among them. Donna had tried her best to read his mood, but his melancholy expression and energetic mannerisms clashed in a way she couldn't really reconcile.

When she realized the steady light had actually begun to disappear, another realization hit her rather out of the blue: she had never stopped to watch something as simple as a relatively unremarkable extraterrestrial sunset. It was always "Donna, let's float above the uninhabited planet Selkoj as it experiences its largest earthquake in recorded history, it would best be translated to a 12 on your Richter scale!" and "Donna, how do you fancy seeing a planet's core that's not only more habitable than that planet's surface, but also the most beautiful and productive mine in its solar system?" and "Donna, did you know that it takes Earth till 250 years after you were born to develop and commercialize efficient, individualized flight technology?" Everything was spectacular, everything was beautiful and historic and destination-worthy. And when the event was over, it was time to run to the next thing. The Doctor had never said, nor could she picture him saying, "Donna, want to stop at a small hilly planet that's not known for its sunsets and just sit and watch a sunset?"

The light was fading much more noticeably, much more quickly, than it would on Earth. As soon as that thought flashed through her mind, she was on her feet, scrambling up the hill, racing against the dying light to see something the Doctor, with nine hundred years under his belt, didn't ever seem to have time for.

She came to the hill's zenith, where Algara was seated with her family, but stood just far enough away that she wouldn't hear their conversation. Because the sun was going down, and this was one of the taller hills in the area, and the white light against the navy sky in association with a sunset was not something Donna had ever seen before. It wasn't the sky lighting on fire with hues of orange and pink like on Earth… It was more like blue watercolours being washed off a blank canvas, only to surge back in full force and… Wow, the sky was already almost black.

A cough came from behind her, followed by a question: "Where are you from?"

She turned around. Algara was looking right at her, though most of her family was still talking idly amongst themselves. She was a slight thing; probably about half Donna's height, with thin hands and greying hair cut very close to her head. Still something about her looked strong. Donna had to remind herself that this lady had no more than a month to live. She certainly didn't look it.

Donna pointed at herself, silently asking _Me?_

Algara laughed, though it turned into a minor coughing fit, and nodded.

"Earth."

The Cirulian pressed a hand against her chest as the ability to speak returned to her. "You get sunsets like this?"

Donna chuckled. "No, ma'am. Sunsets, yes. But they're not remotely similar to this one."

Algara smiled, and absently reached her right hand towards her left arm before stopping short. Donna's eyes fell to the dark spot on her forearm, and she wondered if Algara had lost her sense of smell just yet. She was supposed to say something when taste was gone, so she could be taken somewhere safe before she went blind. Though the cup of juice she had at her side to continually test this appeared to already be empty.

"Why are you doing this?" Donna suddenly asked.

Algara raised one eyebrow.

"You realize you'll never see this again, right?" she continued, turning and stretching her hand in a wide gesture to indicate the surrounding landscape and the dying streaks of light receding from the sky. "This is the last sunset you'll ever see, the last night sky you'll ever see. Don't get me wrong; a whole lot of intelligent creatures will be able to experience it for the first time and so many more because of you, and I know you only have, pardon my saying it, but you only have so many sunsets left and that's at least part of why you're doing this, but…" She shook her head. "Thank you. Let me make my gratitude on behalf of the cave-dwellers perfectly clear. Thank you so much. But… my question is… how did you manage to convince yourself it was worth it? Giving up what little experience of the world you have left?"

All of Algara's relatives were silent now, and Donna wasn't sure if it was simply because of the weight of the question, or they actually hadn't asked her this yet. Either way, they were eagerly waiting to hear her answer.

Algara didn't smile, but her expression was gentle as she said softly, "Since I found out just how sick I was, I've been turning things over in my head. My life, my choices, the differences between the world I was born in and the world around me now, and in which of those differences I had a hand. I decided… I didn't do a lot to change the world, but I'm okay with that. I made my own family, and they _are_ my world. And I know that if I do this… theirs will be safer."

One of the children, a little boy with a long braid and huge eyes, stood up at these words and wrapped his arms around his grandmother. She hugged him back, and Donna waited silently, realizing she probably ought to give them their space back after Algara finished speaking. The children didn't seem to quite comprehend what was happening. All the adults were obviously doing their best to hold back tears.

When she released the child, she patted her lap, and he climbed into it carefully. Algara held him close to her, and looked again to Donna. "I'm not going to be able to watch them grow up," she whispered, "and I've made my peace with that. You tell me this is the last sunset I'll ever see, but I've treated every sunset in the past several weeks as my potential last. They've only become more beautiful. I wish it hadn't taken this illness to start to see things like this. And this sunset?" She smiled widely, and Donna saw the first fat tear trail from the corner of her eye. "It's the best yet."

Donna wracked her mind for an appropriate response, but came up dry. She only blinked at the Upper Cirulian who was about to lose everything, and looked up at the blackened sky and the swath of unfamiliar stars.


	17. Chapter 17

_Well, this is it. I've finally officially completed my first multichapter fanfic! Thanks to everyone for all the support. I can't say I have any more fanfics solely of the Who variety currently in the works—certainly won't be starting any other projects of this size anytime soon—but you just might be seeing more of me in the future. Either way, I hope this ending puts as nice a bow on everything as I think it does. Do enjoy the seventeenth and final installment of OtBoN._

* * *

Donna felt grossly underqualified to be the one supervising the transport of Algara down to the caves, but there wasn't really all that much she had to do.

It was close to the time Algara's sight would fail her completely; bringing her down when she was still fairly able to walk by herself was safest. She sat on the cave floor with her family, surrounded by lizards, and the crowd of Upper Cirulians who had wanted to see the transfer hung back watching.

Hours passed, and Donna very nearly fell asleep sitting against the cave wall, but she would just splash some water into her face and walk some laps around the area as many times as was necessary. Finally, Algara went totally unresponsive, and the small creature detached itself from her arm and moved with surprising speed across the cave floor to where the craftsmen were waiting.

She would remember the transfer as… unremarkable. It was faster than the draining process, but still took a couple hours, during which the Doctor arrived along with a handful of Upper Cirulians. After that, paying attention became all the more difficult. When she looked back on it, she could recall only a flurry of activity in the general vicinity of the craftsmen, the Doctor describing his own adventure with Tuln—all she could remember specifically was that the Cirulian had turned terrified near the end, but managed to stick resolutely to his promise—and their return to the TARDIS. She'd gone straight to her bedroom and intended to change into her nightclothes, but when she woke up she found that all she'd actually done was kick off her shoes.

She sat there in bed, staring at the dusty trainers across the room and wondering how long she'd slept. Her bracelet was currently a grassy green, the next colour in the cycle after yellow, so it couldn't have been too long.

Where was the Doctor?

Donna sighed silently. He certainly needed to be checked up on and told what still needed doing to maintain his own well-being, but he could probably make it for another half hour while she washed up.

* * *

Donna passed from the hallway and into the console room wearing a clean shirt and jeans, a warm sweater, and comfortable shoes suitable for hiking—just in case. Her hair was still damp from her shower but she was perfectly warm and ready to tackle an other day, though there was a conversation that needed to take place before anything else happened.

As she'd fully expected, the Doctor was flying about the console, making constant adjustments to the controls. When she appeared, he crowed, "Morning, sleepyhead!" To punctuate this greeting, he flipped a large switch on the wall upwards, producing an impressive _clang_. Donna looked about, wondering what he'd been doing while she slept. Hopefully gotten some rest himself. He seemed in perfectly good health—his movements were certain and steady, his face clean, his eyes bright as ever. Even his skin seemed to have regained some glow it had lost along the way.

She supposed he'd known by some security system in the TARDIS alerting him of her approach—he always seemed to know she was coming whenever she entered the console room. She stood at the edge of the room, watching him fly about the mass of buttons and switches and levers and screens and dials, and asked, "How long've you been at this?"

"Just started. So! Yesterday we went for hills and got a whole lot more than we bargained for—I was thinking today we aim a lot higher. Namely, Messala-9's clouds! Cloud restaurants, can you imagine? You can eat in a station that's suspended in the troposphere and watch the rain form and fall, which, by the way—"

"Doctor," Donna said, exasperated. "What were you doing while I slept? Did Cirula turn out okay?"

"Oh yeah," he replied without missing a beat. "They eventually got a system in place, loads of paperwork involved in donations, they came to benefit massively from the advances made by the cavers, and the cavers? They got to move up and out. See the sun. Feel the wind, the grass. Eat comparatively gourmet meals every single day." He sighed softly. "I'll tell you what, I'm going to be producing a lot of sensory descriptions in the coming weeks. I think it'll be a good exercise and I encourage you to try it as well."

Donna shrugged and nodded at the same time.

"Some of them died from exposure," he went on, continuing to fiddle with the controls. "Their bodies weren't really prepared for the shift. But every individual made their choice to move, and for them, it was worth it. And as we've seen ample evidence of, they as a species can adapt quickly." He frowned at a screen, tapped it twice with his index finger, and pushed half a dozen buttons before he continued speaking. "There were the other colonies, of course, and they found some of them—utilising the map I drew up for them based on what the gatherers told me—and used members from the original one we helped to tell them the situation, but keeping them stocked with senses wasn't easy. There were often not enough volunteers. Then when the technological age came they found ways to communicate with and travel to other communities much more easily, and it took a couple hundred years and assistance from some visiting Koaimans but they even managed to develop this device that allowed the senseless people to communicate mind-to-mind. Really amazing leaps they made, in not that much time. I tell you what, once they made the transition they really knew what to focus on. A surprisingly impressive species, the Upper Cirulians. I once read about this race that—"

"Are your senses back?"

He stopped short, and looked up at her. "Of course. They kept their end of the bargain."

She eyed his covered arms meaningfully. "Can I see?"

He blinked, and after a moment straightened up from his position hunching over the console, compliantly shedding his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. Sure enough, his arms were bare. Donna didn't even see any faded red suction marks, as she'd half-expected. A smile spread across her face of its own accord.

"To be honest," the Doctor said, pulling his sleeves back down, "the first thing I did after you struck off for your room was eat about two full meals' worth of food. Felt a bit sick, but it was fantastic. And you're probably quite hungry too, so Messala-9? Clouds? Literal pie in the sky? Or at least something vaguely pie-like."

"We're not done talking about this," she said firmly. "What did they do to you?"

He stopped halfway through getting back into his jacket, and met her eyes, appearing mildly alarmed and genuinely confused. "What?"

"When the rest of us were experiencing their history. What happened to you that shook you up so much?"

He was silent for a few moments—just a few. "Exactly the same as what happened to you."

"Oh, don't give me that," she snorted. "You're certainly a drama queen but I can't quite picturing you reacting like… like you did, when seriously _everyone_ else was already more or less stable by the time you came to your senses."

"The reason for 'coming to your senses'—not sure whether that euphemism is apter than ever here or just serves to make things more confusing—was some part of your brain realizing that you'd absorbed all you could handle from the experience for the time being. You knew, on some level, that if it continued, either you'd overload and shut down or it would just be useless and you wouldn't be able to process the excess memories later on. So you came out of it. I hadn't yet reached that point."

"Your capacity was greater than the rest of ours?" she said dubiously. It made sense, and she could swallow it, but she was sure there was more to it than that.

"Yes." He paused, and shrugged. "As well as… Well. You remember how I have a sixth sense? The same one that all the lauep are born with?"

"Yeah," she said uncertainly.

"And how in the case of the craftsmen, their minds are positively buzzing with ideas from the moment they're old enough to think, but that one sense is their only outlet for such thoughts?"

"Yeah," she said again, the connection slowly becoming clearer to her.

"And how those sensations and messages would be the most numerous, because they're the only ones guaranteed for all craftsmen, for the duration of their lives? And how while you and the Upper Cirulians weren't equipped to fully comprehend the experiences of those sensations across generations, I was?"

"Doctor," said Donna softly.

"I'm fine, really I am. It just… well. It was a lot to take in, and it took a bit more time, that's all."

She wasn't sure whether to believe him. Best not, she decided, and fixed him with a hard glare.

He held up his hands, palms facing outwards. "What? I mean it. You want me to try to explain it? I don't really know how."

She crossed her arms. "Explaining things is your specialty, innit?"

He stared at her for a moment, and sighed, running a hand through his hair, which was once again styled just as it usually was, and sprang back up into action once he took his hand down. "Gallifreyan is so much better equipped to explain this sort of thing than English is. It's like…" He licked his lips, thinking. "When there's someone in your mind, you can tell that something's wrong, and you have the limited capacity to receive and respond to messages, but…" He shook his head. "It was overwhelming. It was like… Well, how was it for you?"

Donna blinked, surprised at the question, and shrugged without uncrossing her arms. "It was too much. It was like… like I was surrounded by scenes playing from all throughout history and I had to be looking at at least one of them at any given time, but I couldn't… I couldn't keep up with the changes, and I couldn't keep track of all the input, and I knew that there would be a lot I wouldn't be able to remember."

"Okay," he said. "So… imagine how many craftsmen's memories we were experiencing. I don't even know the number, but it's a lot. Now imagine that rather than a mass of memories whose origins you can't keep track of, it's a multitude of individual _sets_ of memories, whole lives, and you have no filter to keep yourself from experiencing _all_ of it at the same time."

She blinked at him, trying to comply, trying to imagine. It was impossible. It sounded bloody awful, but it was also so completely different from anything she'd ever known that… she just couldn't picture it. She'd try, but find herself disappointingly detached from it all.

But even if she couldn't place herself in the situation, she could certainly do so with him, and he was standing in front of her with that air of unconcern that usually meant he really was quite bothered, and all she could do was double check: "But you're okay?"

He smiled, and she thought she saw a hint of relief in there—how shocking, he didn't want to be talking about this. "Always. In the moment I realize it may have looked bad, but it really honestly wasn't."

 _This time_ , Donna added silently, because she knew he never would—not with the implications those words carried.

"One more thing," she said, and the Doctor nodded as he finally picked his jacket back up and slipped into it. "What happened to Ilseg?"

He furrowed his brow. "What 'happened' to him? Well I didn't see him mentioned in any of the history books or articles I read except to describe how he was involved in the negotiations, if that's what you mean."

She frowned, in fact not quite sure what she'd been hoping to hear. "Did you talk to him before we left?"

"Briefly." He scratched his head, clearly intending to continue but unsure of what to say. "He… he was not in the best of sorts, to put it mildly. But I do think he's going to be okay."

Donna regarded him dubiously. She could just imagine how that conversation would have gone… She was also absolutely sure that the Doctor would not repeat any part of it.

" _I know enough to recognize the signs of a father who's lost a child._ "

He was back to messing with the controls, clearly having lost interest in the topic—or at least become unwilling to pursue it further. She didn't let the silence go on for too long before asking, "Anything else you wanted to talk about?"

He was leaning over the console, putting almost his whole body into the stretch as he tried to reach a poorly-placed switch. "Not really," he replied, voice mildly strained, and managed to flip the switch up with the tip of his finger, bouncing back immediately and straightening his jacket. "Ha-hah! Now then, you don't seem to have much interest in Messala-9; was there something else you had in mind?"

Donna started to shake her head, but mere moments into the gesture stopped short. "Actually…" She chewed the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. "Can we just… stop at the nearest inhabited planet and… see what they've got in the way of food? Find somewhere quiet and pretty and just eat there?"

He looked at her strangely. "You know by now that the TARDIS travels through time _and_ space, right? Nearness doesn't have to be a factor when choosing destinations."

"I do know that," she said, fixing him with an uncompromising stare.

He tilted his head, and checked out a monitor. "The nearest planet's Linth. Pretty big, pretty dry, sparsely populated. Fairly flat. I've heard some good things about its biggest mountain range, I suppose…"

Donna smiled. "Sounds perfect."

He observed her thoughtfully for a few moments, and she held still, meeting his eyes evenly. It wasn't long before he shrugged, and spun around, returning to the mad mess that was the control center of the TARDIS. "Right then! I'll find Linth's most delicious dish and most spectacular attraction. Probably just a scenic mountaintop, but to tell you the truth, at the moment being high above the ground sounds pretty good to me."

"Better than caves?"

He nodded, the corner of his mouth curving upward. "Better than caves."

Donna tilted her head, unsure whether his shoulders had just sagged a bit or she was imagining things. "Been a rough day for you, huh?" she said softly.

"Nonsense. I don't have rough days. Plus you've been asleep for long enough that that incomplete manifestation of the present perfective isn't really accurate anymore."

She regarded him with that fond concern she'd become so comfortable in, and he continued whizzing about the console in that ignoring-the-issue carefully carefree way he'd already been comfortable in by the time she'd met him. She tried to remember how he'd appeared not so long before, when he'd been cut off in almost every way from the world, when he'd temporarily lost his ability to see and teach and learn… to be the Doctor. Already it seemed so far away. A tired smile found its way onto her face.

Nothing had changed.

And nothing ever would.


End file.
